


Snape's Acolyte

by pet_genius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Death Eaters, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Gift Fic, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Sex, Legilimency (Harry Potter), Occlumency (Harry Potter), POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited, Romantic Fluff, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Sex, Teacher/Student Roleplay, Wish Fulfillment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 36,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24521998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pet_genius/pseuds/pet_genius
Summary: When Christina Nettleship graduated from Hogwarts and became an Auror, she did not expect she’d have the opportunity to see her Head of House (and secret crush), Severus Snape, any time soon. And yet, only seven years later, the infamous mass murderer Sirius Black becomes the first to ever escape from Azkaban, and Christina is posted in Hogsmeade, where Sirius has been rumoured to prowl.During a dreary night, Christina meets Severus and reconnects with him as equals. But Severus’s darkening Mark casts a shadow over their relationship, and Voldemort’s return prompts Christina to make a reckless move that will irrevocably alter her life.
Relationships: Severus Snape/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the real Christina](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=the+real+Christina).



Hogsmeade, Evening,Early in the School Year, 1993 

Christina had forgotten what a dump Hogsmeade actually was. All the things that used to look exciting and cool to her now seemed pedestrian and provincial. After she had graduated, she had travelled the world, Muggle and Wizard alike. This town, of fewer than 2,000 people, where nothing ever happened except Quidditch matches, was as boring to her as it was "quaint." She looked around her: The Three Broomsticks was too crowded, and she didn’t want to run into someone she knew, and to then be introduced to everyone they knew. The Hog's Head? Too dingy - she wasn’t a child attempting to impress other children with her own sophistication anymore. She went to Madam Puddifoot's, and hoped that Puddifoot had forgotten her in the intervening years. Thankfully, she had. She sat at a corner table and took out a book, but it was hard to focus. There was one thing in that town she never quite managed to forget - her old Potions Master, who had replaced the teacher she had that first year. It was the happiest day of her 12 year old life. She felt - so silly - that she could understand him, brighten his day, be his favorite - and she applied yourself to his subject like she never had before. When her classmates whinged about the workload, she told them they were babies, that he's a genius, that they're lucky to learn from someone like that, that they should just grow up. "You're just in love with him", they’d teased her. But who else was she going to be in love with? The dwarf who always looked high? The 150 year old Headmaster?

Although he always gave her top marks, he treated her like she was air. Barely looked her in the eye. No matter what she’d tried. Wouldn't even give her detention, and when he did, it was never with him. The other students thought it was favoritism - those lucky bastards didn't know what they were saying. How she wished she was writing lines instead of scrubbing Quidditch gear with Professor McGonagall breathing down her neck!

Only when he threatened to kick her out of class did she stop with her increasingly desperate attempts to get him to notice her ("since you know everything already, Ms. Nettleship, why don't you pester another teacher? Perhaps your Defense teacher hasn't had enough of your interruptions"). Only when threatening her with that did he deign to look at her, and how he seemed to enjoy himself! Of course, she passed her OWLs with an O, and of course she signed up for the NEWT class, and of course he lingered over her name in the call sheet and said: "and naturally, this wouldn't be a Potions class if Christina Nettleship was not here to draw attention to herself."

How he managed to ignore her with fewer than 12 people in the room, Christina never understood. She indulged herself in nostalgia, sipping on Puddifoot’s tea, and her daydream was so vivid, she nearly knocked her teacup over when in walked the real thing. He looked exactly as she remembered him, down to the swish of his robe. His head turned to her very quickly. He was tense, but when he saw her, he grinned immediately. "I wouldn't have expected clumsiness like that from the least moronic student I ever taught."

"Professor," Christina said, and hoped she was being subtle, but it felt like she was 16 again. How embarrassing. _Say something,_ she thought.

"I suppose you can't help but to acknowledge me when I'm the only one here, then? But I certainly did not expect a compliment."

He looked into her eyes, and seemed like he decided he was okay with something.

"Considering what I have been forced to endure today by way of incompetence," he said with a frown, "and by way of talented but indefatigable show-offs who think they can do my job better than I," he continued, "I could use a distraction, even if it is in the form of excessively enthusiastic former students."

"Care to elaborate?" Christina asked.

"Suffering through it once has been enough."

"So, if I may ask, why did you ignore me all this time?"

He didn’t answer, not right away.

"You're 24, 25, now, aren't you? Graduated Auror training, I heard."

So, he hadn't forgotten about her either.

"Yes. Not much combat though. More detective work."

She asked herself: Why are you babbling like that? No one asked you what you do.

"If you're trained as an Auror, a detective no less, I'm sure you can figure it out."

 _If it takes figuring out it's not obvious, so he doesn't hate you,_ she thought. _If he had been indifferent to you, then he'd have treated you the same as everybody else. He is fond of you?!_ Her heart raced.

"Keep going, you're on the right track," he said.

 _How does he know what I'm thinking?_ She wondered. Then she realized, and felt her face growing hot. She couldn’t brave looking at him, and now he was boring into her forehead. Six years she had spent giving him the cow eyes, trying to get him to notice her, and all this time, she had been dreaming of what it was like to feel him close to her, and it got so much worse the older she got.

He seemed to be enjoying himself, now. "Please not that," she prayed silently, knowing she might as well have said it out loud. She was mortified, but there was something to be said for the illusion of decorum.

"So you see," he taunted her, "teenagers can't control their emotions. Even highly intelligent ones, even when they have more self-awareness than you did, are as subtle as a troll. It would have been very taxing for me to shield myself from your emotions, if I had allowed myself to address you directly."

That voice. His mouth curled upward in a thin smile that looked almost involuntary. The others used to say he looked mean, but Christina knew the truth. Madam Puddifoot herself was nowhere to be seen, but she or someone else had magicked a candle into existence while Severus talked, and the dancing flame reflected in his black eyes.

"Of course it only got more difficult the older you got - harder to ignore you, harder to dismiss the sensations I felt in you. But it would have been - ah - unprofessional, as I have been saddled with the role of educator."

Only when he stopped talking did she realize that she had been staring fixedly, that her lips were parted, that her elbow had been inching closer and closer to him. She hastened to put her hands on her lap, but before she did, his hand was on her hand.

"I don't think so, Ms. Nettleship. I have been harassed and pestered by your presence for six years, six years of not being able to look at your beautiful face, lest I be forced to watch myself at the altar with you. Every time I sat down to grade one of your essays I breathed with relief that you did not stoop so low as to dot your I's with little hearts. I had to remove love potions from the curriculum because of you. Being your teacher has been the most singularly frustrating experience of my life, and my life, I assure you, Ms. Nettleship, has been very long."

“Did he say ‘beautiful’?” She thought.

"That's all you heard? Pathetic."

She uncrossed and crossed her legs. His hand was still on hers, but he did not grip, and she did not move it.

It was futile. He knew what she wanted, and she knew he knew what she wanted. But cursed instinct told her to save face, to not admit it. One must pretend, even if the desperation of the pretense undoes it. Sometimes, it's all one can do, and Christina was not 16 anymore.

She asked the first thing that came to her: "How come you're a teacher?"

His face darkened: "I am too dutiful for my own good, Christina," he answered. He’d always been so mysterious.

"I am very grateful for it," she said.

"So, have the Aurors had any luck capturing Sirius Black?" he asked with indifference.

"Nothing yet, but I doubt he will turn up here."

He looked like he was contemplating something.

"I have had," he finally said, "a very long day. How about I help you look for him, say, in the room where you are staying?"

She swallowed.

"I suppose I must thank you for never having tried to get me to notice you by bringing pet amphibians into my classroom," he added with a sigh.

"Someone brought a toad to your class?" Christina asked, shocked. "Who would do something so dangerous and stupid?"

"Incorrigible imbeciles," he answered. "So what do you say?"

"You know what I say," Christina purred.

***

It was everything she thought it would be and more. So rarely does reality live up to fantasy. With her hand in his black hair, she felt like she could stay right there forever.

Apropos of nothing, a recent case came to her, of a maledictus who had bitten some poor bloke to death.

"Speaking of incorrigible imbeciles," she said, "some moron recently trapped himself in a room with a turned maledictus. It's too bad he didn't know, if you're going to enter a confined space with a snake in it, it's advisable to take some blood-replenishing potion beforehand, then you would have time for healing charms."

"Hmmm," Severus said, stroking her face.

"That'll be five points from Slytherin for being a showoff, but I'll consider giving them back if you tell me the ingredients."

"You never took points from your own house and you certainly never gave any. You're just going to have to give me that detention I always wanted."

"Every Saturday," he said softly, "until the end of term. Then we shall see."

This town just might be interesting after all, Christina realized.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised the real Christina once this reaches 20 kudoz, I'll write a follow-up, so there goes! This follows Severus's return to Voldemort as a spy.  
> For anyone interested, I listened to this on repeat while writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brBAsOfxvkA

When Christina was 13, the girls got mean. They were, all in all, pathetic, too cowardly and stupid to cause any real damage with their words, but she was lonely, and sometimes they did hit too close to home. As she would find as an adult, every exceptionally intelligent person (or even moderately intelligent person) experienced this, for better or worse, some more so than others. As an adult, she remembered they used to mock her about her presumptive sexual relationship with her teacher - both for being in one and for not being in one, following the logic of nasty bullies everywhere.

When she heard she’d be stationed near Hogwarts, she reminisced about these girls, how she wished her teacher had given her the time of day, how that one actually stung, how ridiculous it was that she had been mocked for what, technically, would have been abuse.

She also remembered how one time, he caught them at it, standing around her in a circle, cackling and being cows. They didn’t hear him coming, and they all jumped backwards in fright when he barked at them: “Detention, all of you! Now scatter!”

They all dispersed at once, but not Christina, whose feet were nailed to the floor. He didn’t look at her, not even as he saved her, and only said: “I have not taken to giving out points for exceptional achievements in standing straight, Ms. Nettleship. Begone.”

She could not believe they all got detention, and she, who positively ached for it, didn’t.

The heartache was as native as only a child’s can be - or so she thought. When the end of June came, after weeks of bliss, he broke her heart again.

He told her from the first: “I am too dutiful for my own good,” and indeed, he was.

“You’re an auror, and I’ve been strongarmed into being an accomplice in Black’s latest escape act. You will lose your job if the Ministry finds out about this,” he said.

“I’ll quit,” she said back.

“What kind of teacher would I be, if I asked you to waste your potential, stretched to its limits as it is, on my account?”

“You’re not my teacher -”

“Silence. This is final.”

She didn’t understand, and she didn’t accept it.

A year had gone by, the futile hunt continued, and predictably, there was an uptick in mysterious muggle murders, the Dark Mark flashed in the sky, and there were discipline problems in Azkaban. It all kept her and the other aurors busy all year.

Severus returned to her as he had gone, suddenly and at the end of June. If she was angry, she forgot it as soon as she saw him. He was tall, thin, his cheeks sucked in in a way that gave off slight disapproval, but his eyes glittered, and he looked straight at her.

“Professor,” she said, even though she knew it was futile to try to look dignified and indifferent. He put both hands on her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace, and a kiss, his lips on hers, and she opened her mouth and put her hand in his hair. They performed the spontaneous choreography of entering the parlour and shutting the door behind them, all without tearing themselves away, doing so only when they were on the couch.

His eyes devoured her, so intently she felt she was under a lamp. She reached for him, but he recoiled. “Did you catch him?” She asked breathlessly.

“Quite the opposite.”

“What happened?”

Her question was innocent enough, but it was evidently the wrong one.

“What happened,” he said smoothly, “is that you inexplicably fell in love with precisely the wrong person.”

His expression was inscrutable, where it was unmistakable only moments before, but he was still exactly the person she fell in love with at first sight. She wondered how many people could say their teen crush truly was the most brilliant, scathing, mysterious, and beautiful person they’d ever met.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said.

“Ms. Nettleship, there’s always a choice,” he answered cryptically, but she truly felt that she did not - not from the moment she laid eyes on him at Puddifoot’s, and she never believed he had truly helped the criminal, or that he ever stopped being interested in her company.

“But what happened tonight?”

“I need you,” he said simply.

She tried to reach him, but he grabbed her wrists and roughly drove them into the small of her back and led her, walking backwards, to the bed. A single glance into her eyes, as dark and glittering as his, told him she was fearless and willing. A smile broke through and he raised his eyebrow, almost smugly, and Christina’s head tilted back. She could no longer see his face, as he buried it in her chest, grazing, but not biting.

“I never understood people’s reactions to me,” he said, after Christina had come down a bit. “How do you mean?”

Severus looked at the wall. His hair stuck to his face.

“I am still an accomplice in Black’s escape. I pushed you away. I came here uninvited, and I am” - his speech slowed down - “a Death Eater. Tell me, Christina, are you stupid or a masochist? And don’t look at me like that.”

She didn’t speak. She too never understood people’s reactions to him. She was sure there were reasons for all of it, she knew she wasn’t being used.

“You said you needed me.”

“Yes, you, the insufferable, too smart for her own good, inexhaustible source of frustration and heartache. I needed someone who has always harboured a stupid, unwavering, intractable belief in my goodness, despite undeniable evidence to the contrary.”

He seemed slightly mad at her.

“Dumbledore believes in it,” she said, trying to deflect from the crime she must have committed.

“Dumbledore is an untrustworthy, manipulative hypocrite and he also believes in lying, spineless cowards. I should like to think your faith in me, while unmerited, does not hinge entirely on his judgment.”

“I always sensed there was something dodgy under all that whimsy.”

“Remarkably astute,” he sniggered. “A detective indeed.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like the chapter! Please leave reviews, and thanks for reading!

Christina was led into a room, blindfolded and without her wand. It wasn’t exactly what she dreamed of, but she could contend with some unpleasantness to put an end to the ridiculous situation she was in.

She sensed dozens of eyes on her. Was he looking at her too?   
“We are joined today by Christina Nettleship, a young auror who has cleverly decided to join the winning side,” a cold voice cackled.

“But before we allow you to see our faces, before we allow you to take the sacred mark, you have to prove your loyalty. Aurors have put many of our brothers and sisters underground, or behind bars.”

Christina felt the tension grow, and hatred filling the room.

“Would you allow yourself, Christina, to be claimed by one of us, to prove yourself?”

She swallowed. She did not see this coming. What did this have to do with becoming a Death Eater? All she wanted to do was to become a spy, and resolve the supposed conflict of interests that had gotten between her and Severus for months at a time. In truth, she had been feeling uncertain - insecure. Severus seemed to whip out reasons they shouldn’t be together out of thin air.

Well, she would align herself with both sides, she thought, just like him, and then we shall see. This had been her brilliant plan.

Someone who sounded very fat, ugly and stupid spoke up. “She’s a pretty thing,” he said, and it sent shivers (the bad kind) down her spine.

“Do you think so, Goyle? Do you think you have earned her companionship after that debacle at the Ministry?” The cold voice, that had to belong to You Know Who himself, sniggered. “What use would she be to you when you’re in Azkaban? No… there are others, more deserving than you.”

“My Lord, I want her,” a familiar voice said quickly.

A long silence followed. Please, please, please, let it be him, she prayed, and realized how quickly she accepted that she had to be “claimed” by someone at all. Shame on you, Christina, she thought.  Why did Severus have to ask permission at all? What business was it of the others if he… she suppressed the urge to protest.

***

Severus was prepared for a lot to go wrong following the battle at the Department of Mystery, but nothing could prepare him for the sight of his Christina, led like a lamb to the slaughter. He had seen this happen before, and he knew how these things went, he knew exactly how much kindness a fucking auror could expect to meet at the Death Eaters’ hands.

If she gets out of here in a bodybag she’ll be lucky, he realized. He didn’t know if he was more scared or more furious, but none of these were acceptable. He thought quickly. He could not look too eager, he could look like he cared about this one in particular. Someone else must get to try first, and with any luck, the Dark Lord won’t reward those who had failed at the Department… Severus knew someone would want her, least of all because some of them, undiscerning swine that they were, tried their luck each and every time. But when Goyle tried, he felt jealousy rear its head, he suddenly saw Goyle running his sausage fingers on her bare skin, leering stupidly, and he knew he would have to act faster than that.

“My Lord, I want her,” he said, and he felt hot from the top of his head to the tips of the toes on his feet. They had no business knowing what he wanted, they were animals, they had no right to touch his Christina. “Your Christina?” He asked himself. He realized he had never wondered about her history, or indeed about her present. Not until Goyle and the others began to stare at her like that. Maybe you shouldn’t fight for her, he told himself, but this was no use. She got herself into that mess, but he couldn’t help getting her out.

Even if it meant, yet again, making himself out to be one of them.

He submitted himself to the Dark Lord’s gaze, hoping he could pass memories off as fantasies, and cursing the day he was born.

When the Dark Lord cracked a knowing smile, Yaxley clapped Severus on the shoulder. “Finally find something we like, have we?”

“You could say that,” Severus answered, as lecherously as he could.

“A departure from your usual taste, isn’t it?” Yaxley asked.

“Please, he never took any of them,” someone laughed. “Some of us were beginning to wonder.”

“I can’t blame our Severus,” the Dark Lord said from his seat at the edge of the table, “if he felt that asking for a woman could go horribly wrong. We all know what happened to the last one, but let’s just hope this one is smarter than his precious mudblood friend. Severus, I’m very proud of you. Your taste has certainly improved.”

“Thank you, My Lord. I will repay your forgiveness and generosity, you have my word.”

“I trust that you will, Severus,” the Dark Lord said, and if Severus could have, he would have breathed a sigh of relief. He could not wait for the day he would repay the Dark Lord his forgiveness and generosity, indeed… He remembered what he had forced himself to endure, before he went to Christina and prayed that she would have him, that she could still believe in his goodness. Begging forgiveness for having relayed the prophecy - to Lily’s killer, suffering his wrath to be welcomed back into the vile fold of murderers and torturers.

You never should have come to her, he told himself. You should have licked your wounds alone. What does it matter if she believes in you? You know she’s wrong, and now look what you’ve done.

It was one thing for Lily to die because of him, but for Christina to die for him, or for her to find herself at the sweaty mercy of the others, was quite the other. He was furious at her, but he was even more furious at Goyle, fucking Goyle, who thought he could lay his filthy… He forced himself to stop. She’s nothing to you, he reminded himself, and as she’d been allowed to remove the blindfold and take her place on his lap, and he forced himself to touch her in front of all the others, he whispered into her ear, “I should have let you rot, you imbecile.”

***

It always took a while before the control of his emotions slackened, when he was alone after those meetings, but in her presence, it took seconds. Again, he didn’t know if he was more angry or more frightened. He threw her onto the threadbare sofa (yet another undesirable outcome - he never planned to bring her to Spinner’s fucking End), and turned his back to her.

“I’m so-”

One furious look in her general direction shut her up.

He grabbed a bottle of firewhiskey, poured himself a glass, and downed it at once.

“So,” he said.

“It appears that I was mistaken in believing you to be intelligent. Tell me, what the fuck were you thinking?”

“I didn’t know - I thought it would help,” she said in a small voice.

“I should have known, you’re both stupid and a masochist. Evidently, that makes two of us. Trying to help, were you? Whom were you trying to help, exactly?”

She wanted to disappear into the sofa, but he stared at her with ferocity, and she felt somehow even more exposed than she had at the meeting.

“You thought I was being dramatic, that I don’t really have a reason why we can’t -” fury seemed to short-circuit him. He choked on his own bitter laughter as he tried to continue speaking. “Do you know what I’d had to do to ‘claim’ you?”

“You just asked!” She cried defensively.

“Just asked! You do not just ask him for anything! Do you know what happened the last time I asked him for something?!” He shouted.

He looked lik e he couldn’t bear to look at her and so she said nothing. He paced about the small room (“why are we here of all places,” she asked herself).

This continued for a while, but after some pacing and random hexing of furniture, he seemed to have vented enough of his anger, and could at least talk to her, even if he still wouldn’t look at her.

“Alright, it’s merely a complication. Of course, I told you - I told you, your belief in me is stupid, I told you this cannot be, and then you decided to do this, without consulting me of course, without consulting your brain either (he hexed the fireplace). All I need to do is to keep you alive, how hard could it - of course, I never anticipated needing to do that.” He seemed to work himself into a rage again.

“And all, apparently, for a chance to spend more time with me. It could have just as well as been Goyle or Crabbe or one of the other glorified trolls, you’re lucky the mission at the Ministry was such a - you’re welcome, by the way - but -”

“But I don’t understand!” She interrupted what promised to be a rapid descent into incoherence.

“You could have simply asked before what’s his name did!”

“To both our misfortunes, Christina, I am not one of the glorified trolls. This would have led to you being interrogated, and I can only imagine we would have both met a painful death.”

“But why?!” She asked.

“A man whose allegiance is already dubious suddenly and uncharacteristically asks for an auror - and you’ll be pleased to know I was forced to share our moments together with him, although I’ve been able to disguise them as fantasies - half of them already suspect me, the other half probably wants me dead anyway - and you ask me why. I can’t very well reveal the fact that we’ve been shagging, can I?”

“Is that all it’s -”

She is asking for a lot, for someone who might as well have been crushed under “what’s his name” right now, Severus thought, his fury intermingled with jealousy and revulsion. She’s concerned with the purity of my intentions?

“It serves me right,” he hissed at her. “I try to keep my soul intact. I could have attempted to claim any of the other ones, and I didn’t. I came to you, because I mistakenly believed you were intelligent and perceptive and had more insight, when I could have just asked for any of them, and everybody would be better off. But I tried to keep my integrity, you see. An ethical Death Eater!” He laughed bitterly again. “The problem is that you must live, and you must come to no harm, because I -”

She listened intently, but he suddenly stopped speaking. " I fully anticipate to go beyond the veil sooner rather than later", he thought, "and my soul is already nothing to speak of, and she doesn’t have a child, oh no, she didn’t sacrifice herself for Harry James Potter, she sacrificed herself for me, and she didn’t even know she was doing it.  And there isn’t even a prophecy to blame for this one ."

All anger left him suddenly, and with a smooth expression and a silky voice, he started on an entirely new subject. “Very well. It’s simple. All you have to do is stay alive. I can vouch for your loyalty and if you prove loyal, it might even reinforce my position. There is no reason to assume you’ll have to experience the full range of his displeasure.”

He turned to look at her and she nodded. He seemed to be attempting to calm himself down, as well as her.

He put both hands on the arm rest. “Tragically, there’s the matter of consummating this claiming,” he said, shuddering with disgust as he said the word ‘claiming’, but she could already guess when he was using legilimency on her, and she knew he was using it now. “We must, or it’ll all be in vain. I suppose you got what you wanted, because now it’s vital that I keep you close, although why you couldn’t simply move on still eludes me.”

He closed his eyes, seeming nearly overwhelmed by the intensity of her emotion.

“You’re… you’re actually looking forward to this,” he mumbled. “And so do I. An ethical Death Eater, indeed,” he said, and the smile that all her classmates insisted was vicious flashed on his face. She knew the truth about that smile, she always had.  
  
“Welcome to your new home then,” he concluded, and as he moved up the rickety-looking stairs, he snapped his fingers for her to follow.


	4. Chapter 4

The house came alive at night with creaks and moans. From a distance, Christina heard the sounds of the river. She wondered what she had done, and why Severus was so angry with her. She felt that it would be too pathetic to tell him she jumped at the opportunity the Ministry had presented, to send a spy.  _ It wasn’t just for you, _ she told Severus-in-her-head,  _ it’s an amazing opportunity, and you’re the one who always pretended to be so concerned about my career and my potential. _

She told herself it was normal to be tense and nervous after a night like this, but after staring futilely into the ceiling she realized there was a lot, too much, she didn’t understand. He wasn’t a true Death Eater, of that she was certain - but if he wasn’t, why did he appear to speak of You-Know-Who more kindly than he did Dumbledore?  _ Forgiveness and generosity? _ What the hell was that? And what did it mean that he came to her because she believed in his goodness? Why wouldn’t he believe in his own goodness? And what did it matter if she did? Did he need evidence of his “goodness” because he was good - or because he wasn’t? And could she be sure it was indeed the reason?  _ There’s always the chance that it’s just convenient, _ she reminded herself. It was diametrically opposed to her nature to simply believe, and it bothered her how easily she believed.  _ This isn’t like you, Christina, _ she thought to herself, reproachfully. But if he was only using her, why did he claim her at all, even though it seemed to displease him so much? But then - why shouldn’t he have? It seemed to have only fortifi _ ed  _ his position. But if he only wanted sex, it seems that there were others, others he didn’t touch, so much so that it was suspicious. Why wouldn’t he, if all the others apparently had? Was it because of his “goodness”, again? But no, that couldn’t be, because there was a “last one”, who had come to a tragic end.

Forgiveness - what did You-Know-Who have to forgive Severus for?

Questions swam in her brain, another question attacking her whenever she felt she had settled one, and sleep seemed more and more elusive. She was surprised that only questions of the past haunted her, when her future was suddenly shrouded in uncertainty. She knew she would eventually get used to the strange sounds this house made. The atmosphere was something between stifling and spartan and the air felt heavy with spirituality, a sensation Christina had never before felt or cared about.

He always woke up before she did, so she had never had a chance to watch him sleep before. She briefly begrudged him his sleep - if he was so worried, how could he be sleeping? But he seemed to be sleeping fitfully, like he might wake up at any minute, until something settled and calmed at around 3, and when dim sunlight squeezed through into the room, she lingered, with very heavy eyes, on the  thin figure that slept on its side, not under a blanket, but clutching it with quite the opposite of sausage fingers, so that it covered only the calves. Who was this man, shoulder-length black hair now covering his face? What was he dreaming about? Was he having nightmares, or dreams about that “last one”? He was very thin, with faded scars, but of course she knew all that. Even in his sleep he looked like he was hiding something, an inner life she always felt was rich and colourful beyond comparison, even though he always wore black, even though he lived (she found out), in this house. She couldn’t conceive of any imaginative or creative individual flourishing here, in this drab house in this drab town, with only the bare necessities (except, she noted, the books that covered every centimeter of wall). Then she thought maybe this was why an inner life like that had developed in the first place. She remembered how frustrated she had been about being stationed at Hogsmeade, and then she realized she didn’t mind being “stationed” here at all. An inner life seemed like an all or nothing sort of business here, because otherwise, it wouldn’t have been tolerable . 

She didn’t remember falling asleep, she only remembered closing her eyes, just for a little bit, she’d have to be up soon anyway, but if she could just lay her head on his chest for a minute… but judging from the sun’s brightness and position in the sky, it had been much longer than a minute, and she woke up, disoriented, to him handing her a cup of tea and pretending to complain that he had to be the only one who gave his “acolyte” tea.

Christina had the gift of quick wits even in the most trying of circumstances. She often felt that her witty exterior settled into new places and situations much faster than her true self did, for she often seemed much more composed and put-together than she felt. “What are ‘acolytes’ expected to do?” She asked with a carefully placed hint of rebellion. “What do you expect by way of payment for this outstanding generosity?”

But this was mere reflex, a knee-jerk tendency toward sarcasm and skepticism, that didn’t impress Severus at all. Indeed, Christina should have gotten used to it by now - he was a legilimens, after all, never mind that his own armour of sarcasm was second to none. He did not address her questions with more than a slightly raised eyebrow. It was at once frustrating and liberating. There was a little dance that people played with one another, that followed certain rules, and when expectations were met, a small tension was resolved, and it’s just rewarding and safe enough to carry on through life, Christina found, but not so with Severus. Tension always ran high, and the final chord - the resolution - always gave Christina much more than a small reward, or left her desolate. This did not seem to impress Severus either, as Christina knew full well.

“Don’t make a habit of sleeping until noon,” he scolded her, and immediately left her to her own device.

He had long converted his old bedroom into a study, that he had expanded as far as magic would allow. To expand it any further, he was sure, would have required him to employ some manner of Dark magic. The walls were covered with shelves full of ingredients, assorted books and artefacts, Dark and otherwise. He looked around the room and berated himself for its state, as he had allowed it to fall into disrepair since the Dark Lord’s rebirth.

He didn’t know whom he was rebelling against as he told himself neatness is irrelevant if summoning spells exist. Between two masters like Dumbledore and Voldemort, one corner of the world had to be his alone. Until  _ she _ happened, of course, and essentially forced him to let her into his home.

In his long years as a teacher he had made one discovery: There was always a Potter, and there was always a Snape. Yes, he got the biggest Potter of them all, or maybe he was just such a Snapey Snape he was simply irresistible, too good a target to pass up, but there was always a duo like that. But there wasn’t always a Lily, someone who cared, however briefly, someone who would stand up to people like that, and Christina was one such rare individual.

Severus did not like thinking about the night of the Dark Lord’s return, about what he’d endured then, what he forced himself to say to make it out of there alive. When he was allowed to return to his blessed solitude, he noted bitterly that he had to be the only one who had to limp about making his own medicine, performing healing magic on his own damn self. Sadly, he trusted no one else. He tended to his body alone. His soul was a different matter entirely. The Dark was so alluring, and it would have been so easy to simply give in.  _ Just forget about her, she’s been dead for 13 years,  _ he found himself thinking.  _ The Dark Lord might have done this to you, but he was right to, from where he’s standing - Dumbledore is the one who sent you back to him. Just give in, you always wanted to, it’s your best chance. _

It was only natural that her memory had started to fade, but Severus could not help but to be alarmed. The integrity of his soul was the only thing he felt he had left - it was a small reward, but it was something, through it all. Severus always wondered what he would have been like in Lily’s shoes - would he have done as she did, even though she could never truly understand him? Or would he have been in the crowd, laughing? It was pointless rumination, because he never had the choice, but as an adult he felt he had to, he had to make up for the wrong he had done, he had to find the strength somewhere, he had to keep his soul intact so that one day he could tell himself his life wasn’t wasted - and he couldn’t. Whether this was the effect of occlumency or his own deep nature, he did not know - but magic never lied. He could not cast his (stupid, sentimental) patronus.

But as he tried to think of happy moments, he was surprised to find that the usual and very limited repertoire seemed to have expanded. Something incorporeal and weak even seemed to come out of his wand when he thought about Christina, and he felt her allure, her appeal, the strength of her pull, and he knew it was wrong and dangerous and impossible, but he went to her anyway.

For all his prowess as a legilimens, he never saw in her mind the faintest inkling of desire to be a Death Eater. And yet, she surprised him. This certainly was something Lily would never have done, he noted, so he could not be accused of being drawn to her because only she was his “type”. He berated himself for entertaining such a shallow thought.  _ You have an acolyte now, so might as well think like someone who would take one. _

She did not know it, but without her he never would have made it. No amount of protecting Harry Potter could salvage his soul from ruin if she came to harm.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like the story, and please leave reviews/suggestions! Anything is welcome!

“Acolytes” like Christina were expected to attend Death Eater meetings with their “masters”, although what purpose this served except as decoration, Christina did not know. Severus had warned her: “I would be held responsible for any leak traced back to you, and I don’t expect the Death Eaters to hold a fairer trial for an auror than the aurors have held for many of us, should there be a leak. You would be the prime suspect, and both of us would pay, understand?”

Christina nodded. Severus had hoped he would be spared bringing her, that the others would understand that it presented too much of a risk to their cause to let someone new and unfamiliar observe them. Sadly, common sense seemed to have become scarce. Severus could understand this, really – so many of them had  had  their brains turned into mush in Azkaban, and the Dark Lord himself had spent so many years less alive than a ghost, sustained only by a desire for revenge, that the entire operation became different. Add to that a series of failures – Potter’s escape from the graveyard, the ultimate failure to retrieve the prophecy (and the loss of their one tactical advantage) – and they all started to appear increasingly desperate, more paranoid and controlling, distrustful even of one another. Severus never thought he’d feel  _ nostalgic _ for the Death Eaters of yore, who could at least maintain a thin veneer of being cultured and cunning. Of course, with Lucius behind bars and with the likes of Bellatrix at the helm, caution was thrown to the wind, and cruelty prevailed.

Christina sat on his lap throughout the proceedings, uncomfortably close to the Dark Lord himself. “She’s prohibited to speak,” Severus explained. “It’s punishment for her lack of discipline,” he added, looking at her with disdain. Of course, they’d rehearsed this – Christina had to learn that the wrong word could cost them both dearly, and she agreed to trade respectability for safety for the time being. The others could not help but to look at them. Some of them pretended not to mind it much, only sneaking the occasional glance at Severus and the pale and dark-haired woman on his lap, surely imagining that they weren’t being obvious; others did not even do that, and openly stared. One of the Death Eaters seemed very young – still Hogwarts age, to be exact – but he had more decorum than some of the others. Christina was grateful for this, for it gave her no pleasure to be leered at by high school boys. She was learning that the line between fake humiliation and real humiliation was very thin. “Why won’t you show us what this one can do,” one of them asked. “Shame on you, Amycus,” Severus replied, again sounding more like someone who was mocking puritans than like a true puritan. “We’re in the company of school children, and I  _ am _ Draco’s Head of House.”

They gave knowing chuckles, and Draco blushed and frowned. Still, Severus made sure to stroke her hair and place his other hand under her collarbone, dangerously close to her breasts, and she found herself struggling not to move so that it would slide down.

“Ah, but Draco is not so naïve,” the Dark Lord said. “He wants to become a man. Don’t you, Draco?”

“I do, My Lord,” Draco said proudly.

“He and I have discussed his future at length, Severus. You did a fine job as his teacher. He has grown into an outstanding young man under your tutelage.”

“To Severus,” someone exclaimed, holding up a glass of mead. The others murmured in ascent, raising their own glasses. He smiled and gave a polite nod.

“Draco has accepted an assignment many older wizards would have cowered at, to provide a most valuable service to me, without a trace of apprehension. Didn’t you, Draco?” The Dark Lord encouraged him, and Draco confirmed with enthusiasm. “I see now, Severus, that though I was sure you were in Dumbledore’s pocket, that you had transferred your allegiance and devotion to him, you have not. I see that you continued to nurture the true spirit of greatness among Slytherins, right under Dumbledore’s nose. It pleases me.”

“The Dark Lord’s will is law.”

“Well said, Severus.” You-Know-Who – the Dark Lord – now addressed the other Death Eaters, and ordered them all to leave, for he had to speak with Severus alone. “The Auror may stay,” he added, and though the words implied permission, the tone implied a command. The others all hastened to follow his order.

“I am curious - Are you aware of the exact nature of the service Draco took upon himself to provide to me?”

“I admit I am not, My Lord,” Severus answered.

“I worry… he is ambitious and eager, but I worry that like his father, he is too soft, too cowardly. Muggle torture was all well and good, back in the old days, do you remember? Yet he could not lead us to victory in a mission against Death Eaters. I have asked Draco to kill Albus Dumbledore.”

Christina dug her fingernails into Severus’s thigh in horror. She knew better than to speak, even though she felt like screaming. This child seemed barely of age.

“My Lord, I have no doubt you are aware that Draco is hardly a match for Dumbledore. I don’t believe his eventual failure should be held against him, and I’m afraid that I can virtually guarantee it.”

“The child is of age,” You-Know-Who reminded Severus, “and he gave me his word that he is more than up to the task. Should he fail, he ought to pay the price of his arrogance. Do you not think so? And if Lucius thinks he can escape his punishment, tucked safely away in Azkaban… I worry that Lucius is not as faithful as I had thought back then. He stayed out of Azkaban instead of looking for me, and he pretended to be most pleased that I’d returned – yet look at him now. No, the family must pay, do you not think so?”

“The Dark Lord is just.”

Christina understood why she had to be prevented from talking. It never would have occurred to her to respond as Severus just did. She could not reconcile the teacher and head of house who protected her, the man who became her lover, with this person, who seemed willing to conspire against an entire family. Of course, Christina knew exactly who Lucius Malfoy was, and the nature of his crimes, and how much he paid in bribes to stay out of Azkaban, where he belonged.

“I gave Draco until the end of the school year. You know what happens this time next year. I intend for Dumbledore to be indisposed to protect “the one with the power” by then, Severus.”

Christina felt him moving uncomfortably in his seat, gripping the chair.

An entire conversation seemed to take place between them in silence. After a few moments, Severus nodded, and You-Know-Who seemed pleased.

“As a token of my appreciation for your loyalty, I will order your old friend Wormtail to become your assistant. Between him and the Auror, I don’t anticipate that you’ll be distracted from your more pressing tasks.”

“My house doesn’t have much room, My Lord, but rats don’t take up much space.”


	6. Chapter 6

Severus was surprised, and slightly disappointed, that he did not splinch on the journey back to Spinner’s End, with Christina and Peter fucking Pettigrew in tow.

Deliberation, Determination, Destination… he was in no state to achieve deliberation or determination, but he made it to his destination anyway. Detachment, Denial, Death. He looked at Peter, who wanted to be there about as much as Severus wanted him there, or anywhere _. _ It was plainly obvious what Peter’s true function was: To spy on the spy, so that Severus would not forget that his position was not yet cemented, just because he was one of the few who had nothing to do with the fiasco at the Ministry, to test him, to make sure he would not let his “schoolboy grudges” get in the way of “fruitful collaboration.” Any trace of desire to align himself with Voldemort in earnest left him.

He had learned the full truth about Peter too late, much too late. If he had known, that night in the Shrieking Shack… It was a comfort, all these years, to blame it on Black. Severus could tell himself that he tried to warn her, but it was not Black after all. Who knew the natural-born follower could perform such Dark magic?

The thought of being near Peter and not being allowed to kill him was bad enough. The thought of him being near Christina, as if he had no other function in life but to destroy Severus’s, was unbearable. That was before he could even begin to think of the task he’d been set: Kill Dumbledore.

_ Oh, there was a time when you would have been as eager to do it as Draco, _ he told himself.

“Inside,” he ordered both of them. “Wormtail, find a hole to squeeze yourself into, and do not make yourself at home. Christina, upstairs.”

Wordlessly, she followed him up the stairs. She had never seen him so clearly vulnerable, as he sat on the bed and let his exhaustion and, well, plain fear and hurt, show briefly. But immediately, he wore the iron mask again, so fast that Christina asked herself if she was imagining things, if she was so desperate to believe in him that she would tell herself his expression was different for a moment there, as if his expression made any difference considering what she had just witnessed.

“May I speak now?” She asked.

“Only if you wish to be eavesdropped on by household pests.”

He looked up and exhaled. He could communicate with Dumbledore without speaking, carrying what would have been extended and long-winded conversations in glances. He  had just shared a similar conversation with the Dark Lord. He both wished she could read him and dreaded the possibility. But it seemed that she wanted to speak more than she wanted to listen. He conjured a quill and some parchment for her.

“Really?” She mouthed.

“Yes, really,” he mouthed back at her with furrowed eyebrows.

_ Who is this man? _

Half-expecting to have to grade a test, he wrote:  _ A miserable and treacherous hanger-on who moved up in life from blindly following people who make up for a lack of brains with talent on the quidditch pitch, to following the Dark Lord. Do not believe a word he says. He can turn into a rat. Unregistered. _

As Christina read the letters, written in his spidery hand, she felt that this mode of communication, though awkward, compelled him to say more than he otherwise would have.

Next, she asked:  _ What did You-Know-Who tell you to do? _

_ Ordered. And I can’t tell you. _

_ Are you a true Death Eater, Severus? _ She wrote. She had to ask outright. If he lied to her, and if she allowed herself to be lied to, at least she’ll have it in writing that she had tried to figure out the truth.

He looked at his arm miserably, and he looked at her. She was not an Occlumens, as far as he was aware, and he could not tell her the truth. He had just been ordered to kill the only person who could protect his secrets, if need be. He had to answer her question in a way that would go over the Dark Lord’s head, but nothing came to him. The near certainty that he’d be dead soon, when he surely fails to carry out his task, made it impossible for him to think.

_ If I hadn’t convinced the Dark Lord that I am, I would have been dead. If I hadn’t convinced Dumbledore that I’m not, I’d have been in Azkaban. If you’re asking what you should do, I can only say: Think for yourself. If I were you, I would leave. I never would have come here. _

Christina deliberated internally and decided if he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have risked anything to claim her as his acolyte only to then make her tea in the morning. If he had been a true Death Eater, he would have punished her for suggesting that he wasn’t – or would have turned her in for this obvious admission that  _ she _ wasn’t. No true follower of You-Know-Who would have told her to think for herself, even if the act he put on was extremely convincing.

When Severus took the parchment from Christina’s hand, he saw that she had written nothing.

He wrote:  _ So you’re staying? _

_ Do I really have a choice? _

The answer was no. If he let her go, he would have to fabricate something about having obliviated her beforehand, and even that wouldn’t do. He had just been tasked with killing Dumbledore. Letting an Auror return to the Ministry would be unacceptable, even if he scrambled her brain so she couldn’t tell left from right. He was glad she was finally catching on to the gravity of what she had done. He didn’t need to write down “no”. A slight shake of his head communicated this. Images came to him, of Christina murdered or tortured or raped, the escaped prisoners taking all their rage out on her. He knew some of them had been captured in the first place because of him, his spying; he knew some of them begrudged him his freedom (“freedom to roam the halls of my personal hell,” he wanted to shout at them, but it was to no avail, and they wouldn’t have cared – not that Severus could blame them). In the first war, he still had it in him to worry about what they’d do if they found out he switched sides. This time around, he didn’t worry – he verified that it was possible to perform Avada Kedavra on oneself, and that was all he needed to know. But her…

He wrote down:  _ I suppose you could leave the country. Unless you happen to be an unregistered animagus too? _

Even his handwriting looked weary.

_ I’m not leaving the country. _

…And she wasn’t an unregistered animagus; unlike Minerva, he knew what his students did at night, he knew full well that Christina didn’t get up to this sort of exercise, and could hardly do it undetected through auror training and the rest of it.

So she was staying.

He felt something in him move, like a muscle or a nerve that had been stiff with cold, like someone was finally applying something warm to it.

_ Good, because I need you more than ever before,  _ he admitted in writing.

He was certain that he had no more than a year to live. A year would be enough to think of something to make sure she would be safe after he was gone. But until then… he didn’t ask for her to be stationed in Hogsmeade. He didn’t ask for her to still be infatuated with him after all these years. He certainly didn’t ask for her to try to become a Death Eater. But she did all these things, and she was right here, right now, as close to seeing him for who he was as anyone could get, possibly even closer than Dumbledore got. He had a year at most, and he knew full well it would end brutally.

He could not resist the possibility she represented, that he might not die without ever having been loved.

Christina lay awake next to Severus, again. The parchment they had moved back and forth between them had vanished. She realized it was designed to – it had to be a security measure against this “Wormtail.” This detail went into the “not a true Death Eater” column – there was no need for such extensive security against an ally. Sadly, she would have liked to keep the piece of parchment that said he needed her. It was preferable to believe in Severus and to believe he needed her, compared with believing she had stupidly become an acolyte and put herself in danger for an unworthy man.

_ You need to watch out for this, _ she told herself. She had seen many cases go unsolved, or solved too late, because someone got too attached to a theory – and she had formulated her theory when she was 12.

_ Say he lied to Dumbledore somehow. Then he would have wanted me and everyone else to trust his judgment. But he encouraged me to question him, said Dumbledore trusts unworthy people too. _ She remembered some of her Defense teachers and shuddered. _ Unworthy indeed. _

But yes – exactly – Dumbledore trusted them, and Severus; Dumbledore’s trust was not compelling evidence.

The Dark Lord’s trust was another thing altogether. It seemed much more hard-won. She could only assume he was a legilimens, too, for one thing, given that he and Severus seemed able to communicate without speaking, and yet Severus could lie to him?  _ But then, aren’t you lying to him? Didn’t you sign up for this on the assumption that it was possible to lie to him? _

And this trust was not complete, either – the Dark Lord had stationed another Death Eater here to watch over them. Christina noted that she was getting used to referring to him as the Dark Lord. It took hardly any time at all.

Christina knew it was incredibly conceited to think he could lie to Dumbledore or to the Dark Lord but not to her. Still, she always had good instincts, and she could never let a mystery rest, certainly not now that her life might have depended on it. She decided to pursue another lead. Severus’s “other one”, who had met a bitter end.

She wanted to write down all her questions, to start making heads or tails of it, but if Severus was so wary of “Wormtail” finding their correspondence, she knew she had to be even more wary.

Unable to get them out of her head and into a piece of paper, the questions swam in her mind: What made “Wormtail” so untrustworthy? Who was the other one and what happened to her? Why did the Dark Lord seem to feel Severus had to earn his forgiveness - and how was Severus going to do that?

She knew that this time, Severus was wide awake next to her too. His eyes might have been closed but his breathing was too shallow, his position too stiff for someone who was really asleep.

Something had happened in that wordless exchange between Severus and the Dark Lord, something that bothered him or weighed more heavily on his conscience than her decision to sign up.

“Severus?” She whispered.

“Yes?”

“Are you awake?”

She heard an impatient exhalation, followed by: “Obviously.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

The silence that followed this was more stunned than the silence that had preceded the exchange. His hand reached for hers in the dark and held both hands to his chest. This was not a bad man, he could not be a bad man - and if he was a bad man, he was the worst man.

“Severus?”

“Yes, Christina?”

“Are you lying to both of them? Are you just trying to make sure you come out on top?”

She did not anticipate bitter laughter. Severus did not know how to go about answering such a stupid question. For one thing, she was in no position to expect unconditional truthfulness. For another, unless he was much mistaken, he did not believe he would survive to see the end of the war, much less come out on top. He felt angry with her, for being so dense.

“Say that I am.”

The question lingered in the air: Will you still stay?

Christina realized at once: This was not it. He knew what she wanted to hear, he could read it in her mind; if he was not telling her exactly that which would make her complacent and restore her faith, he was sincere.

“You’re not.”

“Indeed I’m not. May I ask that you spare me the need to confirm the obvious, detective?”

It was hard enough to understand him, even when the presence of unwanted house guests didn’t make him even more reserved. Now he was being outright frustrating, and she sensed that the exasperation was mutual. And yet…

“I’m still staying.” She figured her pride could endure being lied to by a man who had deceived either the Dark Lord, or Dumbledore, or both - and nothing could shake her intractable faith in him for long anyway. The puzzle had a solution, something simple and elegant that would make it all fall into place.

Throughout the exchange, he did not let go of her hand, even if, in his frustration, he no longer held it to his heart.

“Severus?” She asked again, feeling that the eight years age gap between them might as well be 20. She had no idea where this question came from.

He sat up, abandoning all hope and pretense of sleep. “Yes, Ms. Nettleship?”

“Were you like me once? An ‘acolyte’?”

She could not picture it. Her experience, she felt, could not have been the norm for the Death Eaters.

“I was fortunate enough to have a glowing recommendation from Lucius Malfoy. I would have made an even worse acolyte than you, I can only imagine, and much less fetching, I might add.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Reviews/suggestions are welcome!


	7. Chapter 7

The following day, Severus ordered both his unwanted subordinates to stay put and wait for him. He had to inform Dumbledore of the plan, even if he could not yet bring himself to tell Dumbledore the whole truth. There was no point to it since he had no intention of following through with this task.  He didn’t bring Christina with him to Dumbledore, and she was left alone with Wormtail. Severus wasn’t happy about this, but he was not worried, either – Wormtail would not hurt her if he stood to gain nothing from this.

Christina and “Wormtail” shot daggers at one another. He seemed to feel it was a great injustice, to be placed in Severus’s service. Christina believed he should consider himself lucky – Severus seemed mainly concerned with getting him out of the way, yet this person (whom nobody respected, as far as she could tell) seemed to view this as a great humiliation.

“You should be more respectful,” she said to him without preamble, and at the same time, he said to her: “You think you’re very clever, don’t you?”

“Whatever do you mean, Wormtail?” She asked.

He flashed his Mark at her. “Pettigrew, to you. Only Death Eaters call me Wormtail, and you’re an acolyte. You’ll see what I mean. You think you have it easy, you think you’re lucky, but you’ll wish somebody else had claimed you when Sniv- ‘Severus’ shows his mettle. It could be worth your while to be more respectful to me, I promise I’ll remember everything.”

The name “Pettigrew” rang a bell, but she was too disgusted to give in to her curiosity. He was pudgy, balding, and everything about him screamed “bootlicker,” it was too much to bear, having that one trying to put her in her place.

“Unless I’m much mistaken, the Dark Lord made you his assistant, Wormtail, not the other way around. He also agreed to let him claim me. He must think Severus worthier than you, so I promise you, I’ll remember everything too.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, mustering all the smugness he could. “You don’t know him like I do. He will never accomplish what the Dark Lord set him to do. He’s going to fail, and he’s going to pay, and you won’t have him to protect you for much longer anyway.”

She scoffed, and he continued: “He could barely protect himself. Needed his little friend to protect him, and she –“

He stopped abruptly. “She what?” Christina asked, feigning impatient boredom.

“She can’t protect anyone anymore, can she?”

Christina knew full well that Professor Snape went to great lengths to be protective. How he seemed to swoop like a vulture at the first sign of danger. Whatever this “Pettigrew” said, he didn’t know the Severus she knew, and she remembered she had been warned against trusting him. Not that she needed much warning – the man was so obviously smarmy and shifty. He seemed a willing source of information, though, and Christina realized that the best way to press him for information was to make him feel disrespected and like his information was worthless.

She ignored him, picked up a book from the extensive library, sat by the window and began to leaf through it.

Predictably, this provoked Wormtail, who had apparently suffered a lot of disrespect in his life, and felt a change was due. Either that, or he had suffered none. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what Snape will do. I brought the Dark Lord back to life, I proved that I am faithful to him… and he’ll never forgive Snape, never – not after he asked for her, as though he deserved some prize for failing. You heard he hasn't taken an acolyte before, and now you think you're special? Hah. You're not, he's asked for someone before, and you should have seen what he was willing to do, just to talk to her. I’ll never understand why the Dark Lord didn’t just kill him. You’ll see. Tell me, is he really over her? He used to be like a lost puppy around her. I wouldn’t be surprised he changes your hair color when he fucks you. If he can get it up at all, that is.”

At this point, Christina reckoned it would be suspicious  _ not _ to hex him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I eagerly await your feedback, like always, as this story is evolving from a one-off gift fic into something more! <3 Having lots of fun with Christina so far, as she's the first character I'm working with that's brand new.


	8. Chapter 8

_ Pettigrew, Pettigrew… _ Where had she heard that name before? Whoever he was, Christina found him despicable: The man had tried to pull rank on her, had attempted to frighten her into exchanging sexual favours, knowing full well she had seen the Dark Lord ordering him to “assist” Severus, that she had witnessed the Dark Lord’s complete disregard for his wishes. He did not even have the guts to try and “claim” her, but he took the first chance to try to deceive her into believing it would benefit her to play nice with him.

And the way he talked about Severus… She knew full well that Severus could “get it up,” and that he had not needed to change a single thing about her to accomplish this. Christina never thought she would hear Severus described as a helpless and possibly impotent “lost puppy” who needed a girl to protect him. She knew him as a forceful presence, a genius who could control a classroom with a glance, who – unlike other teachers – never needed to yell or lose his temper or set ridiculous punishments to earn his students’ respect.

He had named her a prefect, and one of the few occasions he acknowledged her had been the annual briefing sessions. This, she had realized even in real time, was a powerful signal of how important this was. “I don’t consider prefect-ship a prize for past achievements, nor permission to abuse this power. This is a responsibility, and your behaviour will reflect on your house and on your head of house. I trust you, Nettleship, Nott, that you will take it seriously. I will not tolerate fighting in the hallways, I will not tolerate Slytherins being targets or offenders, and if you turn a blind eye to violations by your friends, rest assured I will know, and I will take the badge away and put you in detention with them. If you do not feel up to the task, by all means say so now, and I will not hold it against you. But know that getting the badge and losing it is worse than not getting it at all.”

He had looked her in the eye, then, and at Nott, nodded, and awarded them their badges. She had always done her best to be worthy of it and to honour it. Of course, her infatuation was part of it, but as she grew up, it became intertwined with profound respect, admiration even. Yet here was this Pettigrew, the lowest of the low, talking about Severus like that.

_ Where do I know this name from?  _ Like his attempt to negotiate for her affections, like his foul words about Severus, the question gnawed at her. She didn’t know a Pettigrew from school, nor from work, nor from elsewhere in the Ministry. Then, she remembered: Pettigrew was a footnote in the file on Sirius Black. Sirius Black, whose name had been cleared posthumously… Wasn’t Pettigrew supposed to be dead?! Severus had warned her against trusting this man – and he was right to. Evidently, he had faked even his own death, so why believe a single thing he said?

This put her mind at ease and she waited for Severus to return. She itched to tell him exactly what Wormtail had said, how he had treated her. She savoured the mental image of Severus hexing Wormtail to hell and back, and then perhaps proving, with all his might, that he was well and truly over that girl.

Severus’s eyes lingered over Peter, taking stock of his hex injuries, but he did not investigate. Christina’s expression seemed to convey “whatever my punishment is for this, it’ll be worth it,” and so he gestured for her to follow him up the stairs.

“You’re not going to ask me what happened?” Wormail cried in outrage from down the stairs, and Severus dignified this with a mere slammed door.

“So?” He asked.

“Well, you should have heard how he talked about you!” Christina started at once. His impatient hand motion told her to come out with it. She told him everything Wormtail had said, and what he had tried to accomplish.

He turned pale, paler than usual that is, and then furious, and then smooth as stone again. “Wormtail, up here,” he called.

Wormtail, repulsive with his watery eyes, wheezy voice and horrible posture, like someone who spent the majority of his time crouching, answered the call much too quickly – he had clearly been listening at the door, or at least on his way to do that.

“It is very rich of you to talk about my sex life, considering you spent most of your life as the Weasleys’ pet rat in boys’ dorm rooms. You do not touch, solicit, or threaten my acolyte, understood? The Dark Lord has ordered us to forget our old differences (it was barely noticeable, but Christina realized Severus swallowed that word), and that goes for you as well as for me. Need I remind you of where your old ally is?”

Wormtail accepted this reluctantly, still struggling with the concept of deference to Severus. Christina was appalled.

“That’s it?!” She demanded.

“I’m afraid so,” Severus said without looking at her.

“But you heard how he –“

“It’s a test. The Dark Lord put him here to see if I have it in me not to kill him. He cares not either way, of course – Wormtail’s outlived his usefulness by over a year. But if I kill him, it’ll call my loyalty into question.”

“Why isn’t  _ his _ loyalty in question?”

Severus walked across the room slowly and sat on the edge of the bed.

“He’s got no other option,” he said, his forehead in his hands. “He was supposed to be dead, for Salazar’s…”

He struggled with finishing his thought, and looked nothing like himself. “Where shall he go?” he said, attempting to regain his composure. “He was supposed to be dead – Sirius was supposed to have killed him.”

“So you know about –“

“’Course I bloody know about it,” he said, and Christina could swear she heard a northern accent slip through.

Christina stood back. “So, he told you, and you’re finally realizing you made a mistake.” He sounded didactic, almost mocking. “You wanted your teacher and head of house, and you got me, between two masters, can’t even give Wormtail here detention, and you’re disappointed, is it?”

“I just think you should have –“

“He tortured me.”

The words seemed to escape Severus’s lips against his will.

“Who did – him?” The meaning hovered in the air between them, not quite sinking.

Severus flexed his left wrist.  _ Voldemort _ , he wanted to say. Christina never thought about what it meant to have the Mark.

“What? When?” She asked, and immediately blamed herself for asking this, of all things.

“Before I came to you, last year, told you I needed you.”

“You seemed fine.”

“I healed myself. My injuries.”

Christina pictured him, performing healing magic on himself, in this lonely house, where (she felt) three people were too crowded. Her heart broke for him.

“Don’t pity me.”

He still sat on the edge of the bed, and she rushed toward it, and lowered herself like a mother comforting a hurt child, though she was lower than him, on the floor.

“What did he do to you?” She asked. It was not what she wanted to ask. She wanted to ask what he needed her for if he had already healed himself.

“I- He had good reason to believe I had brought about his first downfall. On purpose. Or in any case, that I wasn’t faithful, that I’d become Dumbledore’s man. On the night he returned he announced my death sentence.”

He looked at Christina’s concerned face, into her glittering eyes. “I had to betray the fact that I am an accomplished occlumens, you see, to explain how Dumbledore had come to trust me. I thus condemned myself to other methods of interrogation.” It was other-worldly, how clinical he sounded, and how distant he looked. “Needless to say, he was not in a forgiving mood. Harry Potter had just escaped him again. I only managed to gain his favour because of what happened at the Ministry, and you must believe me, I am still on a razor’s edge.”

A chill broke into the room through the window. “And Wormtail?” Christina whispered.

“Had resurrected the Dark Lord almost single-handedly, pun-intended. More capable than I ever would have believed of him. And even he is not safe.”

Severus seemed unaffected by the cold. “But why is he here? To test you – okay, but why would his presence be particularly trying?”  _ (More so for you in particular, _ Christina thought, but didn’t need to say.  _ If he had already tortured him, what could Wormtail do, just by being here? _ )

“It was my soul,” Severus said, answering the unasked question. “Why I needed you. For my soul.”

“Severus –“ she started.

“Quiet. You don’t – you can’t understand. I’d not have made it out of there alive if I hadn’t believed myself, when I told him I…” he choked on the “I”, and continued, pretending he didn’t say that word – “what I needed to. I remembered that I was actually a spy for Dumbledore, but I could have easily made myself forget that inconvenient fact.”

At that angle, his hair curtained and shaded his face as he looked down at her. She took his hand and caressed it. “There is nothing I want more than to kill him. I wanted to kill him since I was 11, him and his little – it’s why I – but I can’t. We must protect our souls’ integrity, even if our reputation is in tatters, as Dumbledore might say. Of course, he wouldn’t know anything about it.”

She intimated to him with her eyes alone that she did not care about Dumbledore at this particular junction. She got up and sat beside him on the bed.

“Is your soul… better?”

She didn’t know how else to ask.

“Not for long, I’m afraid,” he answered.

She realized at once that if the fate of this soul rested on her shoulders, she would stop at nothing to make sure it remains intact and attached to his body, if at all possible. She wrapped him in her arm. “I might have wanted my teacher, but Severus, I think I -“

“Don’t.”

_ Don’t say it, or don’t feel it? _ Christina could help one, but not the other. She had wanted her teacher, but he had proven to be so much more than that, and still captivatingly mysterious to boot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, as always <3


	9. Chapter 9

They sat in silence, the air heavy with the words they said, and the words they didn’t. Severus stared ahead beyond the wall, apparently at some point very far away; Christina looked at her own lap with both their hands on it. Her thoughts turned to the year prior, before he showed up at her doorstep. It did not occur to her, not for a second, to question the veracity of what he had said. She had been a foolish child, she realized: She had worked herself into a state over a mere broken heart, wondered if she was being used or not, insisted on getting a definitive statement out of him one way or the other, and in the meanwhile, he was being tortured.  _ Tortured. _ And then expected to go back, again and again.

She had been to two Death Eater meetings, he had claimed her in one, and had been assigned Wormtail in the other. The new information colored her recollection of those meetings. Severus had praised his forgiveness and generosity, had said “the Dark Lord is just,” had shown the Dark Lord memories with Christina, for her safety, had joined in gestures and words of worship, all the while facing a man who had  _ tortured… _ she did not want to imagine what the torture had consisted of, but she could barely help it.

At some point their eyes met again. “You really are beautiful, Ms. Nettleship,” he said, but sentiments like this belonged in another world, not in this one, where people had endured whatever horror the Dark Lord could visit upon his suspected enemies, and then were expected to call him forgiving, generous, and just. She thought she might cry, but she controlled herself.

_ I love you, _ she thought. Her chest rose and fell in a larghetto beat. She couldn’t help it, and if he thought she would be disappointed by what she had learned, he had another thing coming. She herself could not anticipate how much this would endear him to her. She kissed him as though he returned when she thought he was dead, with supernatural gratitude for his presence. In vulgar terms, what followed could be described as a very successful attempt to prove that Wormtail had no idea what he was talking about, but there was nothing vulgar about the thing itself. He undressed her, then himself, gave himself to her as never before, studied her with his eyes, with his tongue (normally so sharp, now so soft, but so powerful), pushed all thoughts of atrocities and of Wormtail and of the things she still didn’t know out of her mind.

Sleep held it all at bay for a few hours more, as the world around them slowed down and almost came to a stop.

***

A Phoenix patronus said it was an emergency, and Severus was gone at once. He didn’t bring Christina with him to Dumbledore, and she was left alone with Wormtail. Severus wasn’t happy about this, but he was not worried, either – Wormtail would not hurt her if he stood to gain nothing from this, and she had proven that she could hex him if need be.

He found Albus in such a state, he was shocked that he had managed to produce a Patronus at all. He was covered in cold sweat and his speech was slurred – he looked every bit like he was about to die. Severus ordered a house elf to fetch him an emergency restorative draught from his personal stores. It was the good stuff, the stuff that could help against the most dreadful curses, the stuff you used only if it was life or death, because of how finicky it was. All the while, Severus asked himself: Why? You’ve been tasked with killing him, and you’re stopping him from killing himself?

Severus stopped thinking when Albus made a feeble groan – he knew he had just saved him. As soon as his eyes regained their usual piercing quality, Severus launched into an attack. He knew he should have been more considerate toward the man, the state Albus was in, but he didn’t have it in him. He held back on asking Albus:  _ Why me? You know if the Dark Lord sees this, I will be finished. _ The answer was obvious – even at Hogwarts, few were up to dealing with such Dark magic.

For all his trouble, Severus got nothing more than evasive, dismissive answers, followed by an order to… to…

The bastard may have framed it like a request, a favour, but it was an order. A command.  _ I have given him everything, endured students, and colleagues, and danger and torture, and I saved his life, and he… _ Such a merciless appeal to mercy, Severus had never seen. It might have appeared like a solution to his predicament, but it was just as much a condemnation: Severus had hoped to defy the Dark Lord, to risk near certain death perhaps, but to show his true self to the world, and yet even that was denied. He gave his word that he would kill Dumbledore when the time came, that he would cement himself in the eyes of the world as a traitor, as the man who killed his benefactor, as the worst Death Eater of them all.

_ Will she stay? _ Christina might have liked to pretend she didn’t care about Dumbledore, but Severus, whose ability to show his face among wizards, whose very freedom, depended on Dumbledore’s reputation, knew that everybody cared about him. The last couple of nights had been miraculous, they had restored him, had given him the strength to look ahead and stomach what was sure to come. He was grateful, so grateful, to have had a taste of true bliss. He would have somehow snuck her out of the country, before not killing Dumbledore, and someone would have cared that he had died, someone would have told the world who he was.

Dumbledore didn’t know about Christina, he didn’t know what he was asking Severus to sacrifice, just as he got it. Severus told her, in his mind:  _ I am sorry that I will break your heart in the worst way. You believed in me, and you were wrong. _ He knew the pain he was to cause her, he had felt it himself. It was the pain the Dark Lord caused him, when Severus finally saw his true colors.  _ You will be remembered as the worst one of them all. She will despise you. _

He felt disgusted with himself for ever having touched her, and wondered how had he sunk lower than Lupin, who was, last Severus had heard, having a sordid affair of his own with an inappropriately young auror.

It was common knowledge that Hogwarts didn’t teach the Dark Arts, certainly not since Dumbledore had taken over. This being the case, there was a gaping lacuna in the younger Death Eaters’ education, and Lord Voldemort – the greatest sorcerer, the shaper of minds – made a point of teaching all his followers Dark Magic. Severus had learned the theory behind the killing curse from the master himself; he had practiced the wand movement with a stick so that when the time came, he could cast it successfully. Secretly, he had hoped he would get to use it on Potter, Black, on his father… he had even fantasized of using it on Dumbledore himself, in his wildest dreams. He was fond of the killing curse – straight and to the point, practical, unfailingly effective, depending only on the caster’s presence of mind to kill. It was very appealing to Severus until it claimed Lily, and with it, every dream Severus ever had.

Severus’s ambitions for himself had been grand at one time – but little by little, they had transformed, and personal desire was only to die with his soul intact, undamaged, despite what he’d seen and suffered. He had enough capacity for self-pity to realize how sad this was, but even he was not so bitter that he believed even that would be taken away.

_ Why did I go to her, _ he asked himself,  _ to save a soul that was doomed? To drag her down with me? Just because I couldn’t cast my Patronus?! _

Draco’s soul, of course, was something else entirely. The sheer unfairness of it would have driven anyone to madness. Draco had volunteered to commit murder, and yet the fate of his soul was of great concern to Dumbledore, just like Sirius before him, and all the while, Severus’s soul was deemed of secondary importance to the outcome of the war. Briefly, the same indignant hatred that pushed Severus into the Death Eaters’ open arms consumed him again.

‘I might have wanted my teacher,’ she had said, ‘but Severus, I think I…’

_ Love you. _ He knew she did, he knew she was one of those rare people, beautiful inside and out, who stood up to the James Potters of the world. That was why he had given her the badge all these years ago – he didn’t need to use legilimency on her to know there was more to her than a sharp mind and misguided affection for authority figures. He had seen her, comforting others, taking them by the hand to the hospital wing, standing up to her friends, taking taunts and jeers from her jealous and petty classmates with dignified indifference. He was not surprised at all to learn that she had become an Auror. And now he had learned her soul was such, that she could watch a Death Eater confess to having been tortured, to having used her to heal his soul after he had nearly abandoned Dumbledore. A person like her could never love a murderer, could never let Dark Magic sway her the way it had swayed him when he was young.

***

Christina felt that the house in Spinner’s End was much too small for three people. She found that her theory about the people who lived here was correct: while her inner life adapted to the under-stimulating and deprived conditions through a renewed passion for reading and learning, Wormtail grew even more insufferable, constantly cooking up schemes to get one up on Severus, failing miserably, complaining, scurrying away when threatened, listening at doors, attempting to sneak a look at her showering, etc. In a twisted way, she was grateful for this: It was important to cultivate her strength.

The house was too small for three people, but the two guests that showed up unannounced one evening taxed the house and its residents beyond capacity. Bellatrix LeStrange shot a curse at Christina as soon as she walked through the door, followed by her distraught sister, Narcissa Malfoy. “I killed a fox,” Bellatrix said matter-of-factly. “Thought it was an Auror, possibly this one.”

The year before, following the mass break-out from Azkaban, many of the older Aurors had taken perverse pleasure in regaling their juniors with tales of the first war, and when it came to the LeStranges and the Longbottoms, everyone said the same thing with a sigh, or with a shudder:  _ Worse than death, what happened to them… _

“She is my responsibility, Bellatrix,” Severus reminded her, “and I assure you I will deal with her myself, should I learn that her true loyalty is to the Ministry. The Dark Lord believes it useful to infiltrate their ranks, and I don’t see why you, of all people, would argue.”

“I don’t trust you either, Snape,” LeStrange cackled, “as you very well know.”

Christina threw her wand on the ground, praying that this would not turn out to be a mistake. “I want to serve the Dark Lord,” she said. “I regret what the Aurors did in the first war – it was –“ she found herself unable to speak before she could finish her sentence.

“Bellatrix, please,” Severus said calmly. “She was 13 when the Dark Lord first fell. You can’t expect her to have had something to do with this or with what her predecessors did.”

“Please, Severus,” Narcissa Malfoy begged. Evidently, she had something on her mind, a much more pressing issue than Christina’s true heart, but her sister insisted on interrogating Severus, and Christina watched intently, to distract herself from the pain of the curse – but also because she hoped to find answers.

It was all utter bollocks, of course, everything Severus told LeStrange. He, Christina knew, had turned spy before the Dark Lord’s downfall, and to the best of knowledge, he had nothing to be all that remorseful for, and yet he told LeStrange he had come to Dumbledore, “fresh from my Death Eater days, and spun him a tale of the deepest remorse.” Christina knew Severus’s crimes were so minor that he had no true need for Dumbledore’s protection. Severus did not tell the two guests of the torture he had endured, and spoke only of the Dark Lord’s ‘initial displeasure’, and though he had told Christina he was on a razor’s edge, he seemed perfectly confident in front of LeStrange, even had the nerve to taunt her about Azkaban. Christina knew him as nothing short of noble in spirit, a man who had managed to wallow in filth and remain pure of heart, who had been heroic even as he had claimed her as an acolyte, even as he had told her he should have let her rot… and yet here he was, explaining to Bellatrix that he took the easy way out, stayed out of Azkaban under Dumbledore’s protection, kept Potter alive for the sake of the same protection, longed to teach Defense rather than Potions when Christina had always suspected he hated teaching altogether… She committed the explanations to memory, but made sure to not believe a word of it.

Finally, the other guest managed to explain what they were doing there. If LeStrange had not been there, Christina feared that she might have attacked Narcissa, who threw herself at Severus as though he was a former lover and begged him to help her.

Christina watched him agree to make an unbreakable vow – only then did true doubt creep into her heart. She wanted to shout:  _ Whom have you been lying to?! _ But she knew better than to do so in the presence of the legendary Bellatrix LeStrange. She cursed herself, as even in her absolute outrage, she could not help but feel the same burning desire for the man, as he, cold, smug, and disdainful, reminded LeStrange, who was struck dumb by his willingness to take the vow, to draw her wand, and move a little closer, as though she was nothing more than a fledgling student.

Christina reckoned she had never felt so many emotions at once – confusion, horror, admiration, a throbbing, pulsating ache of desire beneath her stomach, an ache of an altogether different sort, inflicted by LeStrange, and jealousy, and even a hint of resentment that she had been reduced to grovelling in front of LeStrange.  


The surprise guests left, and the house now seemed veritably spacious in comparison, even with the rat. Christina had no idea what need to tend to first. Severus stood silently by the window, watched them disapparate, and turned around to face her, his face still impassive and inscrutable. He must have sensed it in her, the conflicting thoughts and needs, as he took charge, decided that she needed to rest and heal, and supported her as she staggered to the bed. He explained nothing, despite her imploring, questioning gaze, and tended only to the curse. “It was a nice touch, with the wand,” he volunteered, in between daubs of a healing salve to her torso. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you not to drop your wand if I’m not there, do I?”

As the pain from the curse subsided, Christina realized it only made it harder to distract herself from her desire. To her endless frustration, Severus, Death Eater or not, was truly noble, as he rebuffed her advances, and insisted that she needed to rest.  _ I cannot not love you,  _ she thought, and she ached to say it, even though his face was like stone, and she was more confused than ever.


	10. Chapter 10

Severus remained steadfast in his refusal to touch Christina, in any capacity. It was insulting and outright absurd – she was his unofficial lover and his official acolyte, and yet, though he was skilled enough at healing magic that she had completely recovered days ago, he insisted that she needed rest. On top of that, it was obviously a poorly thought-out excuse – he was in decent enough shape to seek her out after he had been…  _ tortured. _ The pain of hearing him say it still hurt more than the curses Bellatrix had used on her. Whenever she wanted to throw it in his face, she was reminded of his cold eyes and his distant tone, of the rapid return to understatements and euphemisms, and lost her strength.

Even so, she knew he was hiding something, and he had made an unbreakable vow to do something, something the Dark Lord had prohibited his followers from speaking of, even amongst themselves, and there were still Wormtail’s hints about their school days.

She decided to do the unthinkable, and try to get it out of Wormtail, the only one who seemed willing to tell her anything, even if she did know better than to take him at his word.  _ Good thing I’m a detective, then, _ Christina told herself. She knew lying to a well-versed liar was no small feat, but while he had been playing a rat, she was out there, seeing the world. She marveled to herself at how quickly she seemed to forget that she had a life before she got here, to Spinner’s End. Thankfully, once she remembered she was a detective, and a good one at that, she felt her mind sharpen, her instincts leading her to a strategy.

She approached him. “Hey, Peter?”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What happened to Wormtail, then?”

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other looking guilty. “Look, I thought about it, and you were right about him, okay? I should have realized sooner. How can I make it up to you?”

Wormtail laughed. “I’m not stupid, Christina,” he said malevolently.

“Do you think it’ll be so easy? You hexed me, do you think my memory is that short? I tried to tell you, I tried to play fair.”

She immediately dropped the shameful and apologetic façade. “Alright, fine. I was never going to let you touch me. I just don’t want to be an acolyte anymore, alright? And if I prove to the Dark Lord that Severus isn’t faithful, he might Mark me sooner. And maybe LeStrange will be more careful with me next time.”

Feeling as though a very fat fish was wriggling on his hook, Wormtail smiled, looking every bit like he was going to savour the upper hand. “Don’t like being cursed, do you? Bet you didn’t feel so special when he let LeStrange hit you. How do you think I felt?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry, yeah? I shouldn’t have hexed you, and honestly, he should be a bit more respectful toward you, you are both Death Eaters.”

She saw that Wormtail was enjoying himself. Her plan worked perfectly – to let him catch her in a lie, only to then sell him another lie, and make him lower his guard. She did not anticipate having to smile, nod, and feign amusement at what he had to say, his stories about Severus’s school days, and James Potter, Lily Evans, and Sirius Black.

Severus returned to Spinner’s End to find Wormtail wearing a smug grin. He even thought he saw him wink at him. Thinking that this could not bode well, he opened the bedroom door. Christina sat ashen-faced on the bed. _She knows,_ he realized. _It’s over._ _I have to get her out of the country._

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I never meant for you to – it’s why I didn’t touch you, I had hoped you would leave because of that, and then you won’t get hurt any more than you already have.”

When she looked up at him, he saw that she'd been crying. Even now, she was simply lovely, with the traces of tears down her face, and glistening eyes with thick, matted lashes.

“What are you talking about?” She asked, her voice tight.

He realized immediately that he had made a horrible mistake – Christina was not crying about the approaching shuffling off of Dumbledore’s mortal coil. He backtracked quickly, hoping to use whatever this was to drive her away. “Don’t you regret becoming an acolyte?” He improvised.

“No, I don’t regret becoming an – you expect me believe you won’t touch me because James bloody Potter was an arsehole?”

_ Potter? _ Severus was amazed to realize he hadn’t thought of Potter in days. The distance from the pestilent progeny helped, but it wasn’t that – the murder he would have to commit, the knowledge that he would have to protect the school and his cover after that, and the threat to Christina, all drove James Potter out of his mind. He should have realized immediately that this was what the rat had looked so pleased with, that if the rat had learned that Christina harbored any concern for Dumbledore, he would have given her up to the Dark Lord just as he had… the Potters.

He went on the offensive, hoping it would make her forget his reaction was a complete non-sequitur. “And I’m supposed to believe you’re crying about it now? It’s been nearly two decades, Christina, what are you really crying about?”

“I thought (she sniffed) he was a good man, a hero – I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, everyone said…”

“I’m well-aware, Ms. Nettleship,” he said, feeling the old resentment resurface. “Do you always cry over being wrong, detective?”

He didn’t want to be harsh, but it was easier, a well-worn groove that kept people away from him and protected him. He did not need to be reminded at this particular moment that James was remembered as a hero while he would be remembered as a traitor and a murderer, even in her eyes. His heart broke in bits and pieces as she confirmed again that she was one of a kind, the kind of person who could weep over a child who was scorned two decades ago, whose faith in him helped repair his soul. He wondered about his cursed Patronus and if it would survive crossing the line between the innocent and murderers, and losing Christina.

“I’m not crying about being wrong,” she said, now crying again in earnest, and looking more beautiful than ever, her features glowing in her flush skin. “I’m crying because of what he told me, that slimy piece of…”

She could not finish her sentence, and Severus felt that he was reprieved, which was his second lapse in judgment.

“What are you sorry about, anyway?” She demanded as soon as she regained her composure a little. “It’s him and his gang that were at fault there, he says so himself.” She wanted to shout what he had prohibited her from shouting – that she might have lusted after him when she believed him invulnerable and brilliant, but she loved him when he showed her a glimpse of hurt. She knew better than to do that, for it seemed to only pain him.

He cursed himself for believing he could fool her and hide it, but supposed it was for the best. She would find out sooner or later…  _ better now than after she will have been branded. _

“You have to listen through,” he warned her. “I won’t blame you if you leave, but you have to listen through.”

Christina gave a solemn nod, even though she wanted to laugh at the thought of leaving.

“I have been ordered to kill Dumbledore,” he said, after a few moments of deliberation. Silence followed, until Christina reminded him that he'd told her to listen through. He exhaled and began to elaborate: “At the meeting you accompanied me to. The Dark Lord and I, we communicate through legilimency, he ordered me without saying a word of it out loud. That – that his is final order. Unless, of course, Draco unexpectedly pulls through and does the deed himself, but as it were, he had only been tasked with this owing to the Dark Lord’s increasing inventiveness in torture, seeing as Lucius is protected from more traditional methods at the moment, in Azkaban.”

He was embarrassed to catch himself rambling. “This is why Narcissa came.”

He waited for Christina to put two and two together, and he saw on her face that she did. “You vowed to do it,” she said.

“Precisely, Ms. Nettleship,” he said. “I would not have expected any less from you. I had planned not to do it, to figure out a way for you to escape before my cover was blown. I was not so fortunate. A few days ago, Dumbledore nearly killed himself. He summoned me to help him… I could only do enough to stopper the curse for a year. He ordered me to kill him – to take over for him as headmaster, and I’m going to do it, Christina.”

She sat quite still and silent, and waited for him to finish. When he said nothing for a long while, she was bewildered. The story was straight-forward enough – was he expecting her to make some connection? It wasn’t a hard story to follow, after all, but it didn’t explain anything – why wouldn’t he touch her, why would she want to leave?

It began to feel like a contest to see who would blink first, and Christina was not feeling very competitive. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. “This doesn’t explain anything. Why did you say you were sorry?”

“Was I not clear enough,” he asked miserably, “when I said not a moment ago that I’m going to kill Dumbledore?”

“He’s dying anyway, isn’t he? Didn’t you just say you had saved him? Gave him an extra year?”

Severus could not understand why she, she of all people, was suddenly being so thickheaded. He asked himself what sort of curse was operating on him, that made it so he would have to destroy everything he cared about by his own hand. It was bad enough that he would lose her, but to be the one to explain to her exactly why she had to leave… he instinctively resorted to Occlumency, and he felt all emotion evaporate, his being reduced to the scathing and harsh voice that could convince him of anything…

“For reasons that remain opaque to me you seem resistant to the truth, Ms. Nettleship. In fewer than twelve months, I will have become a murderer. I used you, and you put yourself in grave danger for my sake, and – a murderer I might be, but I am not so low that I would sleep with you knowing that I’m lying to you.”

_ A guilty conscience? _ This was ridiculous. Her competitive urge resurfacing, Christina knew for absolute fact he had no idea what he was talking about.

“It’s not murder if it’s both euthanasia and self-defense,  _ Professor. _ And I should know. You’ve not been following my career that closely after all, or you would have realized. I killed someone before.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, you are few but you are the reason for writing anything, so I must apologize to you for the delay in publishing a follow up chapter. This one is a decent length, at least, and I hope you enjoy it!  
> Your thoughts are welcome!

It was inappropriate, given the gravity of the situation, but she had to admit having him gaping at her for a change was refreshing.

“I did. Leo McAllister. Have you heard about him?”

Severus shook his head.

“Witches started showing up at Mungo’s… pregnant. With no idea how it happened. After several cases of this, they finally decided to tell someone at the Ministry… said they suspected Dark magic had been used on them. You could say that again. With the level of education people get on the Dark arts, I made it out of Hogwarts not knowing anything about the Imperius curse, but thankfully, they filled us in at Auror training. So this McAllister picked it up somewhere, and I tracked him down. Armed with a wand and veritaserum, I wanted him to give me the names of all his victims, you see, I had hoped I’d be able to explain to them what had been done to them.”

She paused to gauge his reaction. It seemed that the story had captivated him.

“I wasn’t very experienced – well, I’m still not, people like Moody have been around for decades (at Moody’s mention, she noticed that he winced) – anyhow, I followed him to a small wizarding pub near Liverpool, and I couldn’t believe my luck when he approached me himself. Thought it would be harder to corner him, that he would pick up someone else, that I’d have to follow them. Not so. I started feeling very peaceful, suddenly. Very relaxed.”

She paused again. He was pale, nearly shaking.

“I see that you know what it feels like to be Imperiused. Not surprising. Well, fortunately, we’re trained at resisting this curse, and I was able to cast it off, but it was very close, and I didn’t have much time before he might have felt that I had managed to resist him, so I pulled my wand out – and – and…”

Again, Christina broke out in uncontrollable sobs. She hated that part, the memory of it still weighed heavily on her spirit. She wondered if she would ever stop asking herself what a more experienced auror might have done in her place. Absurdly, Severus, whom she had set out to comfort, put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

“He deserved it,” he whispered, as soon as she seemed to have calmed down enough to hear it. “I would have done it too. I wish I could do it again.”

“You think I’m crying over HIM?! Please, Severus. You don’t understand. He had an owl – a big tawny thing, and it flew in front of him, or maybe he imperiused the owl to fly in front of him, because I don’t think many owls would have got in the middle of a wizarding duel, and I – I killed it. Then I killed McAllister. And if you think I regret that, you’re wrong, Professor. That piece of scum had it coming, think of what he was about to do to me.”

Severus let out a choking laugh. “So that’s it, two killing curses I managed, in about ten seconds. And I only feel sorry that I killed the bird, and that I didn’t get a chance to interrogate McAllister, believe me. I felt so horrible, you don’t understand, it was so small and helpless on the ground, with open eyes, not knowing what had hit it – and – and – they are so much lighter than they look, birds, when you pick them up, and it had such soft feathers, I tried to get it to wake up, I stroked its head, but nothing happened. It was all I could do to bury the owl before I cleaned the crime scene up and went to report it… I didn’t know the owl’s name or what it liked to eat or anything, and it deserved better than this piece of scum for an owner, don’t you think?”

Dumbfounded, Severus nodded suspiciously. “So the man,” he asked slowly, “McAllister, lying there, and what he did to you, it didn’t bother you at all?”

“What did I just say? What did  _ you _ just say? He deserved it. And he would have done it to me too if he hadn’t been unlucky enough to come across an Auror. It was a kinder fate than he deserved, you know, you know that just using the Imperius curse is illegal, and to use it for  _ that _ , eurgh. But I do regret the bird.”

She reached for her bag, rummaged a little, and found it – a lone feather. “I kept this, to remind me… of unintended consequences of trying to do the right thing. Imagine if I had caught him with a victim, and if he had used the victim as a human shield instead of the bird. So… that’s it. That’s the man I killed. See, not all of us are so virtuous that they somehow managed to keep their hands clean even as Death Eaters in the first war.”

Unintended consequences… Severus could understand what Christina meant. Unintended consequences accounted for his entire life.

He suppressed the urge to breathe heavily. It was the other thing she said that had set him and her apart. The unintended consequences  _ of doing the right thing. _ But the more urgent matter was verifying the absurd idea that though she felt nothing over the man, she still mourned the man’s owl. Severus never felt a particular affinity for animals – he couldn’t conceive of keeping a pet in this house growing up, since wizards didn’t have attack dogs, the only kind of animal Tobias would have tolerated, and he had enough attack dogs in his life already. But he knew that other people adored their pets, and their pets adored them, and he accepted it as a fact of life, but to cry over someone else’s pet, when she had killed the owner and apparently, never spared him another thought…

Christina seemed to have mastered legilimency. “Don’t mock me,” she pleaded. “I know you think I’m mad, everyone else did when I explained about the owl. But it was innocent, it wasn’t the owl’s fault its owner used the Imperius curse to get his end away!”

Her reasoning was sound, almost too sound, and for the first time, he wondered if she was truly that pure of heart or if her emotional reactions aligned so perfectly with her values because she was in fact not so pure of heart at all. Severus always considered himself a decent judge of character, but then, there was at least one glaring counterpoint.

“I do not mean to mock you, although you do worry me,” he said, finally cracking an involuntary smile, a near twitch.

“Your indifference to the idea that Dumbledore will die within the year, that I will be the one to –“

As a student, Christina never would have had the nerve, and she was sure no other acolyte could afford to be so openly disrespectful, but she couldn’t hold her tongue.

“He’s 150 years old, he was ancient when I was a student, he was ancient when  _ you _ were a student! And he’s dying anyway! You, you said I was right when I said he had to be shiftier than everyone says he is, and if you don’t kill him, that Draco will, and if nobody kills him, from what I gather, he will die anyway, and Draco too, and you! What is there to get so worked up about? Stop looking at my feather, that owl might have lived on for years! And him dying didn’t save anybody’s life!”

Severus opened his mouth and closed it. He was never lost for words, and he did not expect Christina to decimate his reasoning so thoroughly.

“I know you don’t want to do it,” she said, with sudden kindness in her voice. “You’re… I don’t know what to call it. I want to say friends but I don’t think this is it. And… you don’t want to kill anybody,” she guessed, and studied his expression to check if her guess was accurate. A small quiver above his upper lip confirmed this, she decided to believe, although it might as well have confirmed the reverse.

He had said he wanted to kill Wormtail, that Wormtail had been allowed to live only because to kill him would betray Severus’s allegiance, but Christina realized this could not be true, not unless there was yet another thing she didn’t know. Killing, he could have explained, would have reinforced his position with Dumbledore, which would in turn make him more valuable to the Dark Lord. And even if he truly could not get away with killing him, he could certainly have done more than hurl insults at him. Given what Christina had just heard from Wormtail’s very mouth, she wanted to kill him herself.

Ever since she was 13 years old, she had heard whispers of adoration for the Boy-Who-Lived, for his parents, James and Lily Potter, Members of the Order of the Phoenix and the final casualties of the war, except the poor Longbottoms, and now she learned that James apparently made it his life’s work to persecute Severus, all because of Lily, and Lily actually fell for it.

Christina thought she might be ill, and Dumbledore’s eventual fate had nothing to do with it. On the one year anniversary of their death, the entire school travelled to their house, that had become a historical site, to pay their respect to the family, and she laid flowers on a memorial statue of a thug of the worst sort, and the woman who married him.

“As self-satisfied as his father before him,” Severus had told Bellatrix, of Harry Potter. Christina never thought to ponder these words and what they had meant. Severus’s hatred toward James Potter must have been common knowledge – how could it not be, given what she had just heard?

“I was wrong,” she said suddenly. “But not about you. Was it hard when the school took everyone to Godric’s Hollow?”

The question hit Severus like a ton of bricks. No one had ever asked him – Dumbledore had kept looking at him as though expecting him to fail, to slip, but Severus was behind a mask, had disappeared entirely beneath a stern façade of quiet disapproval. People had whispered, those first few years, before he had gained the staff’s confidence, and he had felt, not for the first or last time, that he was on a tightrope above a lake infested with Inferi. A thousand emotions, of which none were safe, had struggled for dominance inside him then, and so he focused on keeping the Slytherins close together, barking instructions at them, and lunging after students who had strayed from their packs. Had it been hard? Hard to place a wreath on Lily’s grave? He had expected it to be hard, that this event would be trying, that he would not be able to resist the urge to spit on Potter’s name  _ (how, how could you have believed in Black?) _ or fall apart when he saw Lily’s, but the thing itself was nothing but a stone monument that could never capture the true wickedness or the sheer wonder of its objects.

“It wasn’t hard. I had something to do, I focused on the students, I told them to stand in a straight line or they would all stand in line for detention, and it was… as tolerable as any other day. I was spared having to grade papers by people who can’t tell moonstones apart from fairy eggs.”

“I wish I never felt sorry that they died.”

His face hardened. “You have already proven that you are callous in the face of death, Christina.”

“Only the death of disgusting and unworthy –“

“That is enough,” he said, and Christina jumped at the change in his tone.

“I meant –“

“I know what you meant. He sounds like he was absolutely vile. I wouldn’t have married him in a million years.”

Christina made sure to remember to try to say that more often, as he kissed her so hard he touched her back to the mattress, and she wrapped a leg around his waist and hoped Wormtail was listening.

***

Two of the five natural arms in the house burned. Wormtail glowed with excitement, possibly at the prospect of returning to the Malfoy Manor where he might be assigned another job. Severus’s irritation quickly turned into ruthless punctuality, as he ordered Christina to get ready for a meeting. “Death Eaters are expected to be prepared to appear at his side at all times, as you know full well.”

Christina, who had not yet been made privy to the Dark Lord’s wishes via her arm, hurried to the nearest point where they could all Disapparate from and grabbed Severus’s arm.

Though Lucius Malfoy had been imprisoned, this meeting too took place at the Malfoy Manor, and Christina, who was a quick learner, took her place on Severus’s lap and with downcast eyes, subjected herself to the gaze of the other Death Eaters who had arrived before them. They were not so late, however, that the Dark Lord did not look pleased upon their arrival. Only the residents of the Manor and a particularly dreadful bunch of Death Eaters were already there – perhaps they never left. Them, and Bellatrix LeStrange, who still looked at Christina as though she was beneath her contempt.

“Severus, I hear that you have been putting your acolyte to good use,” the Dark Lord said, and Christina noted that no one had yet addressed her.

“I thank you again, My Lord,” Severus said smoothly, “for this wonderful… reward. She has proven most enthusiastic, even mere days after being hexed.”

“Surely, you’re not upset with Bellatrix, are you?” The Dark Lord inquired with an ominous tone.

“Not at all, My Lord, on the contrary. I expected no less of her.”

No one had addressed Christina directly since she first asked to join, and so when the Dark Lord himself did, she was startled, jumping back on her seat, which was unfortunately Severus, who hissed in her ear to control herself. “And you, acolyte, do you still feel any lingering resentment?”

Panic made the room turn cold and time to stand still. The Dark Lord, a mind-reader, a torturer and a murderer, had asked her a question, and the honest answer was unacceptable.  _ Resentment, resentment for having been cursed when my only crime was occupying space while being an Auror? _ Christina opted for near-certain death over certain death, and answered: “N… no, My- My Lord. She has done what she believed necessary. I only wish to prove that it was unnecessary.”

Severus was cold and his demeanor harsh, but under the table, his hand stroked and squeezed Christina’s thigh above the knee, all his care and concern concentrated in his palm. “She lies, but she lies well, Severus,” the Dark Lord said approvingly and though his tone was almost warm, it sent a chill down Christina’s spine.

“I hope you will not find me immodest if I say she learned from the best. She still has traces of a warrior against the Dark, My Lord, but it is those traces exactly that I hope will make her useful in the future. It is natural – if a sign of weakness – to resent those who have visited harm upon you, but we will uproot this weakness. My Lord, I am certain that she will surprise you.”

“I can hardly wait,” the Dark Lord said, brimming with arrogance. Realizing she had been reprieved, Christina returned to her senses, and quickly began to wonder what purpose the meeting served, except as yet another occasion for ritual humiliation.

As this was Christina’s third meeting, she wasn’t as appalled by the Death Eaters as she had previously been, and she wasn’t distracted by the need to remember their names. She followed the developments much more easily, and so she was able to focus on other things, like how jarring it was to Disapparate from the Malfoy Manor to the last house on Spinner's End, and how it seemed to embitter Wormtail that he was still stuck here, and how Severus seemed to have adapted almost seamlessly to the ways of the upperclassmen. He seemed to fit in at the Malfoy Manor, much more than some of the other Death Eaters.

But she did not have time to think about it too hard, because – to her delighted surprise – Severus looked into her eyes with unbridled lust, then put his mouth to the base of her neck and sucked on it as though trying to draw out venom. If he had not supported her weight, holding her by the waist, as he did so, her knees might have given in… at last, he withdrew from her, only to shoot one more look at her, gasping with her eyes half-closed, biting her lower lip, and then to pull a wand on Wormtail who was staring shamelessly. “Begone, or I’ll make you temporarily deaf and blind, Wormtail,” he hissed. “Or I might choose not to lift the curse.”

Wormtail scurried out the door at once and Severus pulled an unquestioning Christina to the threadbare couch, and pushed on her shoulder, forcing her to sit down. He tucked his wand between the couch pillows without looking at it, and with his other hand, exposed her shoulders, then her breasts, and then his hand slid down to pull the bottom of her dress up, so that only her midriff was covered. He glanced and seemed to admire his handiwork as he undid his own cloak and robe, and stood before her only in his underwear, his clothes laid at his feet. “Exquisite,” he said smugly. At the sound of something behind the door, Severus reached for his wand and shot a curse backwards without looking, and Wormtail was heard crying out and cussing, “how did he know, the greasy dolt.”

“Now, where were we?” He asked.

“I believe you had just remarked on my exquisite beauty, or perhaps your exquisite skill,” Christina said, hoping against all odds she was being articulate, as talking was the last thing on her mind.

“Very good,” he said, stepping closer, one foot shaking off the fabric of his robe… “beauty and brains. Can you guess what I want to do?”

She had butterflies in her stomach, and most absurdly, she felt her cheeks grow warm. Though her brain must have been depleted from blood, she still wondered why being asked that made her blush when being stripped didn’t, why she felt like a teenager holding hands with Nott for the first time.

“I’ll have to demonstrate, I see,” he said with a smirk, and grabbed her wrists.

As he crouched lower, his nose almost on her forehead, and stepped closer, she parted her knees without conscious thought, and allowed herself to be consumed. When at some point her hands were freed, she ran one through his hair, thick and long enough to offer resistance, and when she was sure he could not see, for his eyes and the rest of his face were too close to her body to see her own face, she mouthed the words she longed to say but knew he could not stand to hear.

All thought was lost in the sound of breathing; as she did sometimes, she wondered if he had cast some charm on himself to make his touch give off a slight current, or if it was just the natural reaction of the combination of elements, him and her… whatever it was, she felt it run from her heart to her toes, making her arch her feet involuntarily.

She could not suppress a gasp of protest when he withdrew his hand. “Very needy tonight, I see,” he taunted her, and his finger was still tantalizingly close to where it had been before, and she tried to guide it back with the power of suggestion and by shifting her legs, because her hands were unwilling to separate from his chest and face but he was cruel, took a slight step back to study her again, black hair to dark eyes to parted lips, exposed skin… then she felt the sensation she could now recognize, the other type of penetration he was so gifted at, and the impulse to hang on to some dignity and to control something made her resist it, and her mind went to the nearest thing that was not her burning need. “You realize, don’t you,” he started as he moved closer again, “that it doesn’t take legilimency to figure out what you want at the moment.”

“Why’d you use it then?”

“Second nature,” he said. “Takes more effort to not do it. And the intensity of your emotion (this he said very near her so that she felt hot air on the back of her neck) made it almost impossible to avoid, and all my willpower is spent resisting you. But you put up a resistance… will you resist me now?”

“No,” she gasped, and felt him growing closer, closer.

“You always were eager to please,” he remarked, and she felt she was in no position to argue.

***

“I cannot begin to tell you how much you have pleased me,” Severus said.

“With all due respect, I think I have some idea,” Christina retorted; even he could not disguise everything, and whatever he said, she felt what she felt in her body. He let out a rare laugh.

“No, not that, although I have been in a state of progressive deprivation from the moment you jumped backwards against me without warning. You handled yourself well at the meeting, and then you almost repelled me just now, before…”

“Does it matter? You said it yourself, I couldn’t hide it anyway,” she interrupted with a trace of frustration.

“It matters a great deal. It means – it means there’s a chance I might – I might be able to tell you everything. You resisted the Imperius curse, you almost repelled me, even though I knew exactly what to search for. You might be able to protect yourself even from the Dark Lord.”

It was the very last thing she wanted to think about. She did not want to hide anything, she wanted the opposite, to shout it from the rooftop of every house in Wizarding Britain, “I love him and he’s taking on an impossible burden for you and I love him,” but this seemed the furthest thing from his mind. Suddenly, she had a revelation, an epiphany, and she knew what she could say to him to make him feel better.

“Severus, I’ll do it. If it makes it more bearable for you, I’ll do it. I’ll kill Dumbledore.”


	12. Chapter 12

It was testament to Severus’s mettle, Christina thought, that he seemed dumbstruck and horrified only for a fraction of a second at her suggestion, and almost immediately gained an air of impatient disregard for Christina’s ridiculous posturing.

“Do you think killing Albus Dumbledore himself will come as easily for you as killing Leo McAllister, who, I’m sure you’ll agree, is more than a notch or two below Dumbledore in terms of worthiness of being? Worse than that, do you think it will somehow change the facts?”

_ The facts, the facts,  _ the facts that no one would tell her, the few key pieces of information that would help Christina make sense of it all… “Who says I want to change the facts? I don’t know what these facts are, maybe I’ll like those facts!”

“This is quite enough.”

“No, no it’s not!” She snapped. “You tell me you’re going to kill Dumbledore like that’s supposed to make me pack my things and go, and when I tell you I’ll sooner do it myself, you say it doesn’t change anything –“

“IT  _ DOESN’T _ CHANGE ANYTHING, YOU TWIT!”

She had never seen him like this, his smooth and silky eloquence undone by rage and anguish. Again he demonstrated the inhuman speed at which he could change his demeanor completely, and he seemed to nearly crumple in an apologetic heap.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –“

Christina would have rubbed her eyes in disbelief. Severus Snape, reduced to apologizing. For some reason, this vexed Christina more than anything.

“But nothing changes anything, does it?” She asked icily. “You kill him, he dies and you’re upset. I kill him, he dies and you’re upset. No one kills him, he dies and you, I can only assume, are upset - before you die as well.”

“It doesn’t change anything because it’s all – it’s all my fault. I – I used to pray that he would die, that I would kill him, that I would make myself valuable to the Dark Lord. I practiced the Killing Curse with a stick. I deserve it because I wanted it.”

She sensed that he expected to be either flogged or absolved, that the suspense, waiting for her to say something was more agonizing than anything else she could have done. It was unfortunate for him, then, that Christina could not stomach this level of stupidity, certainly not coming from him.

_ He would have to endure his agony for a few more moments. He’d endured worse. _ Christina listed all the questions that still haunted her: Who was the other woman Severus had asked the Dark Lord for and what happened to her? Why did Albus buy a “tale of the deepest remorse” from a man who hadn’t committed a single noteworthy crime, however much he said he wanted to, and why did he stop wanting to? Why was he a teacher? Why did he refuse to hear the words “I love you”?

“I can explain everything. But Christina, you will have to either leave the country or master Occlumency – do you understand?”

She realized he had just felt how much the mystery gripped her, how it enticed her even as she witnessed him in his torment, and she had never wanted to master Occlumency more.

“My previous attempt to teach it was abysmal, but I trust that you’ll prove more adept than the boy-who-peaked-at-infancy. The absence of a supernatural connection between your mind and the Dark Lord’s should help… as does your naturally superior mind, although that’s not saying much at all.”

Despicable as teaching had been to Severus, he had adapted, and he slipped into the role of teacher naturally.

Christina smiled, and thought back to her years in school, and wished she could go back in time to tell her younger self that one day, he would stop ignoring her, would in fact volunteer to teach her magic that required the closest intimacy.

“It is to our detriment that you’ll have to reach a higher level of proficiency than he was required to. You see – he had only to protect himself from intrusion, he could have made do with simple concealment. You’ll have to be able to misdirect, plan ahead, think on your feet, possibly fabricate things altogether.”

He spoke with a trace of resentment, but also twisted pride.

“And you have to know exactly who you are, because it’s possible that you’ll have to restore yourself.”

He looked at the window as he said this, again as though confessing, but pulled himself back. “Do you, Christina?”

She did not know how to answer that. She did not know what it meant. When presented with the question like that, every answer seemed inadequate. She was a Slytherin, an Auror, she loved animals but had foregone their company because of her job, and all of that seemed to exist only in the background now that she was an acolyte. She had the feeling that this was not the sort of answer he had expected, anyway, that these truths wouldn’t protect her.

“Do you?” She asked him.

“Reflexive defensiveness won’t get you very far. Do I what?”

_ Know who you are? Know who I am? _

“I learned the hard way. And yes, I know who you are.”

The intimacy she had longed for in her Hogwarts robe and Slytherin scarves and stockings was now too much, scorching rather than warm.

“Slytherins are ambitious but adaptable. Their ambitions adapt themselves to their circumstances. You – you seek validation of your worth, but only from people you consider worthy. You want to be recognized and loved for your brains and your skill and your diligence. It’s why you made a career of besting clever, skillful wizards. But that’s not who you are.”

_ McAllister wasn’t clever or skillful, he was a repugnant smelly owl-killing…  _ Christina lost her train of thought as Severus raised an eyebrow at her and ran his long, slender finger down his cheek and his jaw.

“I know he was. And that’s who you are. You’re a person who would kill him without hesitation and would weep over a bird. You’re a person who withstood mockery with dignity. You’re the person I named prefect, knowing it would mean enduring overly detailed incident reports, and your fawning, because I knew you were best suited for what I think prefects should do – because I had seen you comforting people who had been hurt, even if they were intolerable snot-nosed little berks who could never hope to repay you.”

Christina couldn’t help but feel that she now had a better sense of who Severus was, too.

She barely heard the next words out of Severus’s mouth over the sound of her own heartbeat.

“It might sound unimportant to you, and appear not much of a defense, but it’s that which he will attempt to destroy,” he said in a near whisper.

Tears welled in her eyes with the knowledge that he had to be speaking from experience.

“Enough. I have tolerated enough tears cried in vain in my house.”

Christina nodded obediently and exhaled to control herself.

“We’re not likely to get anywhere tonight. We’ll try tomorrow.”

One day was emphatically not enough time, Christina felt, considering everything that happened in the span of a few hours. The meeting that night already felt like a distant memory.

Sleep came faster than it normally did, claiming Christina and consuming her consciousness just like Severus had that night.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, please leave reviews, suggestions are welcome, and I hope everyone are keeping safe and taking care of themselves - if my writing is helping anyone in this dark time we're facing it makes me very happy. Cheers!


	13. Chapter 13

The first of the Nettleships to show any sign of magic was born in the late 19 th Century, to a non-assuming family who had been shocked to find out they were not just people, but Muggles. His Muggle relatives went on to become laborers or attend college; he had been sent to Hogwarts and studied there. He excelled in History of Magic, despite or perhaps because his own family had absolutely no place in it, and at rune translation. He always feared that his relative inadequacy at the more practical aspects of magic was because of his blood. He married another Muggle-born witch; they settled in a Muggle community and though they could scarcely hope to be successful among wizards, their magic made them very successful among Muggles. They gave birth to Christina’s father, Marcus, and they were delighted when he first showed magic at two. He grew up knowing Hogwarts awaited him, and he proved much more adept, though he suspected his parents were as powerful as any witch or wizard, that it was the commonly held, but mistaken, as far as he could tell, belief that magical ancestry produced more powerful children. He had married Christina’s mother, Aurelia, who was a bit younger, and who knew Hagrid as a student, and also his alleged victim Myrtle, and yet never warned Christina about him.

Christina grew up knowing she had Muggle relatives, but that she cannot talk about it – though she was what they called a pureblood, she was only a first-generation pureblood and had to demonstrate her dedication to her magical heritage. When she was sorted into Slytherin, her parents breathed in relief – it had meant she would share her dorm and her meals with the right people, that her path would be paved and her life would be easy. She had only met her Muggle relatives a few times – she liked them, they were clever and fun, but she knew she must not speak of it. She loved their house with things like a record player and a telly, but since she had only visited once past the age of four, it all felt like a dream. She had heard the headmaster speak against Lord Voldemort, and her dormmates mock the Headmaster at night. She vividly remembered how one particular occasion, an older Slytherin who had a knack for transfiguration and impressions had attempted to transfigure himself into Dumbledore’s likeness, which had gone horribly wrong, and to which Dumbledore had reacted with his characteristic and aggravating equanimity, and only set him the punishment of being forced to show up at the Great Hall half-transfigured instead of hiding in the hospital wing until the effect wore off. She had hated her original Head of House, Professor Slughorn, who seemed to regard teaching as a way to ingratiate himself to the future famous witches and wizards, and instead of giving instructions, would spend at least fifteen minutes out of each class praising students’ relatives whom he had taught in the past.

November 1, 1981, was a Sunday and the day after Halloween; the students, Christina among them, scarcely expected to be summoned into the Great Hall, and they were more surprised still that whatever was so important was delivered by the Deputy Headmistress and not by Dumbledore himself.

Professor Slughorn, red-eyed and absolutely deflated, roughly gathered all the Slytherins, but Christina felt a rare pang of sympathy for him. She wondered if Dumbledore had died. Once the Great Hall settled down, Professor McGonagall spoke: “You-Know-Who has fallen last night.” Her voice was crisp, and her words took a long while to sink in. “Professor Dumbledore is tending to some important business, as the Ministry requires his help. This is a joyous day, students, and we will allow and encourage one and all to celebrate, but before we do (her voice broke), we must honour and grieve those who have fallen. It has been a long and hard ten years, and You-Know-Who’s last victims were James and Lily Potter. A moment of silence, if you please, before we proceed.”

A brash voice from the Gryffindor table asked aloud: “But Professor, how –“

“Quiet, Dillys! There will be time to discuss matters over with your Heads of House – me, in your case, after breakfast!”

Christina quietly wondered the same thing, and her mind mulled the question over all throughout the minute of silence, as she heard some of the Slytherins on every side of her whispering to one another in hushed and urgent voices.

Professor Slughorn could not provide much by way of an explanation, but neither could anybody else. You-Know-Who’s downfall was shrouded in mystery; Slughorn announced that he would be retiring before long, that what had befallen Lily was a tragedy of the highest order and that his time had come to leave Hogwarts. Christina couldn’t say she would miss him – but she was surprised that he decided to retire in the middle of the academic year.

As an adult, Christina would always struggle with letting mysteries be, but soon she grew rather tired of hearing about Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. She knew everyone from the Minister of Magic downwards were preoccupied with solving this mystery and rounding up Death Eaters. She was only 12, and as such, she adapted easily: Suddenly visiting the Muggle branch of the family was thinkable, suddenly some of the students who had once boasted relations to Death Eaters lowered their heads and disavowed them, the rules of politeness changed around her, her Headmaster became even more of a godhead figure than he already had been, and of course, most importantly, her new Potions Master and Head of House arrived in the middle of the year, after a month or so with a substitute teacher.

The rest was history – he ignored her, but he named her prefect; he never complimented her but when her career advice meeting came, he spat that he would recommend her heartily for any position she could possibly want and to get out of his office at once, “Auror, is it? Very well, I’m sure you already know what NEWT levels you will need, Ms. Nettleship, and please call in Mr. Lorcas, who requires significantly more guidance than you do.”

***

Christina woke early with a flutter of excitement. The prospect of learning Occlumency from Severus did not frighten her at all. She had no secrets from him, and she knew he was well-equipped to keep what needed to be concealed, to himself.

The opposite did not seem to be true for Severus, who tossed and turned. He already knew the content of her mind, so it was not what he would discover that made him worry. She mulled it over and realized that to betray the secrets of how he had accomplished what he had, only for her to then fail and hand these secrets over to a torturer and murderer was an incalculable risk he had just assumed for her benefit. With a pang of regret, she remembered the fateful day when she decided to infiltrate the Death Eaters. She wanted to be close to him, at least to force him to come up with a better explanation for the way he refused to accept that they could be happy together. She never had dreamed that she would get what she wanted at the price of imperiling him even more. She had never appreciated the magnitude of the danger – she’d always known some Death Eaters got ridiculous sentences or were acquitted altogether on the grounds that they had supposedly been Imperiused or otherwise coerced, but nobody believed it, certainly not Moody.

Indignation rose in her – if the reasons they could not be together were so compelling, why did he lead her on at all, why did he… and then she was ashamed again, and she worried that he would see her indignation and her childish entitlement, when he had suffered so much. Still she could not understand why he took it upon himself to endure all this, and her thoughts wandered to the dreadful possibilities of what she might have endured, had he not claimed her, and saved her from a fate that probably would have made McAllister look tender and thoughtful. She resolved to apply herself to the study of Occlumency like she had to Potions all these years ago and prayed that she had the disposition for it.

Quietly, she walked downstairs, already instinctively avoiding the stair that creaked, and though nobody had let Wormtail in, she found him asleep on the couch.  _ Lazy sod. _ Not at all concerned with waking him up, she brewed tea and coffee with her wand, and warmed some toast and buttered it, before deftly levitating the modest breakfast up the stairs. She wondered if Severus would like waking up to the smell of freshly brewed hot drinks and freshly toasted bread.

“Already trying to impress your teacher, I see.” Always the light sleeper, he was already awake. She blushed – the truth was even sillier. She wanted to offer some measure of comfort with what little she had. How coffee and toast could be adequate compensation for constant risk and occasional torture, she did not know, but it was all she could provide.


	14. Chapter 14

“Occlumency is the protection of the mind against malevolent outside influences,” Severus explained quietly once they had settled down to begin Christina’s training. “It’s useful against Dementors, and against spells that harm the mind, like Confundus, memory charms, the Imperius curse, and of course, Legilimency. Different techniques are useful in different situations.”

Christina wondered how come this branch of magic was obscure even among Aurors, who were supposed, after all, to defeat Dark wizards.

“I was taught by Dumbledore,” Severus said, as though he was reading –  _ because  _ he must have been reading her mind, “in the first war. The Dark Lord thought it most amusing that Dumbledore himself handed me the tools I wielded to lie to him, to hide my true loyalty. Alas, he does not know Dumbledore is in possession of a device that makes it impossible even for a trained Occlumens to falsify his memories without being detected. If you succeed, you should be able to lie even if you drink a cauldron’s worth of Veritaserum. I don’t suppose that the Ministry is interested in training people to be able to defend against Dementors and interrogation without a wand – Occlumency is wandless. Against Legilimency in particular – it relies a great deal on emotions, and a skilled legilimens must not only master the magic itself, but also interpret the findings, so as to avoid merely confirming what they already assumed, and have their notions muddled by their own emotions. Memories are closely tied to emotions – if you control your emotions, you can control what you show – for example, I was able to adequately associate the memories of the Dark Lord’s disappearance with the deepest grief; you can control what you will see when searching through someone else’s mind, that is to say, if you can attune yourself to their true emotional state, you are more likely to get an accurate idea. Your emotional state, in my vicinity, was so plainly obvious that it was nearly unbearable to be around you.”

Christina absorbed this knowledge with a mix of astonishment and admiration.

“I’m afraid not much has changed,” he added with a smirk. Quickly resuming his somber tone, he continued: “But it is very useful – the Dark Lord struggles with certain emotional states.”

Severus seemed distant – Christina wondered if he had been subjected to Veritaserum before what he euphemized as “other methods of interrogation” had taken place, and she wondered if the same fate might befall her.

“What emotional states are those?” She asked, shaking her concern. “Don’t tell me he’s never lusted after anyone,” she added, attempting to lighten the mood.

“That he has, or at least, that he could understand. I don’t think, however, that he’s ever admired another, and misguided as your admiration might be, it’s a useful starting point. It is also useful to remember that the more primal emotions can be used to overwhelm, drive out, and conceal what you need to hide.”

“Primal emotions?”

“Fear, Ms. Nettleship. The Death Eaters who aren’t trained in controlling their emotions have let their fear warp them irrevocably.”

As Severus explained that Occlumency is merely the willful, deliberate application of defenses all wizards are capable of utilizing, “the only difference being that for the non-Occlumens, the truth will either be discovered or vanish entirely,” Christina felt an unfamiliar sensation. Her conviction began to waiver. She had never been very hot-tempered, but she believed that people like her were on the side of good, and law, and order, and that these things were for the most part one and the same. She believed that the Death Eaters who had lied about the Imperius curse were simply that – slippery liars who had taken the easy way out. It had never occurred to her, and as far as she could tell, nor to anyone else among the Aurors or in the DMLE, that coercion took many forms, and that people were now languishing in Azkaban or had been killed or tortured by Aurors, who might never have wanted to do the things they did.

“Don’t let your natural empathy mislead you, Christina,” Severus said, his tone scolding, his expression of mild amusement. “Bellatrix’s curses would have been much more painful had I not been here, and had I not been uncommonly knowledgeable about Dark Magic and the undoing thereof. Only the worst of the worst had been able to stay out of Azkaban, or to survive the Dementors. I assure you the people who had any trace of goodness in them have long perished, or have been driven to madness by the Dementors, and in any case, they’re not the ones the Dark Lord went to the trouble of freeing.”

“Sirius Black -”

“As I said.”

Christina blushed; she had momentarily forgotten that, though innocent of the crime Sirius had been imprisoned for, he was far from innocent in the more profound sense. “He, and his cousin who has cursed you, survived there because they were convinced that they had done the right thing. Did you sense any remorse in Bellatrix when she cursed you when you were defenseless? Should I have allowed you to feel the full extent of her displeasure?”

She swallowed.

“Didn’t think so. In any case, the unfortunate capacity of the Blacks to believe themselves superior to all others is hardly relevant to our current endeavor. The point you must remember is that the Dark Lord knows full-well who has been coerced; only those who believed in him in the first place or who had been corrupted by him beyond repair were allowed to continue to live, or else they were not even important enough for the Dark Lord to kill or for the Ministry to imprison. It is only by training yourself to feel what you need to feel, what you’re expected to feel, that you’ll survive – and it’s only by then pulling yourself back and remembering what you tried to hide, and forced yourself to forget, that you’ll stay who you are.”

She nodded in comprehension, although she had no idea, still, how she might accomplish this. He let out a long sigh.

“I wish you had asked me before attempting to join him.”

Christina’s answer surprised even her: “I don’t.”

Only when she said it, did she realize she had meant it. He would have prohibited her from doing it, but now that she had, she was uniquely positioned to help him, truly help him – if she could help his soul without even knowing she had, she could do so much more with the knowledge of her true purpose. She could prevent further damage in the first place, she could spare him the Killing Curse.

“Yet another misguided sentiment that might yet prove helpful. You recall that I distinguished between the ability to merely conceal and the ability to fabricate outright, which is our true objective. But for now – try and repel me.”

It was just as well that Severus did not have the presence of mind to cast a full-strength  _ legilimens _ on Christina, in her first attempt. The words he uttered sent him back to the distant past, when Christina might have received her Hogwarts letter, and he was a Death Eater who had done the unthinkable, who had switched sides…

1980

The last time Severus had sat in that office, he was fifteen. He was fifteen, and he had recently been dragged out of the tunnel leading to the Shrieking Shack by James fucking Potter, who, as a reward for his  _ heroism  _ got to tell everyone that he had “saved that greasy idiot’s life, you know, I might hate him, but I couldn’t let him die, could I?”

James omitted many important details, and Dumbledore… Dumbledore made sure that Severus could not ameliorate the situation, even if anybody, anyone at all, would have deigned to listen to the unpopular half-blood over the Gryffindor Golden Child.

It was then that Severus learned a very important lesson:  _ de minimis non curat lex. _ His life was a trifling matter, as was his reputation, and he walked out of Dumbledore’s office a changed man.  _ If my life is a trifling matter to the law, the law is a trifling matter to me. _ In his heart, the law, represented by Slughorn, Dumbledore, and those who had appointed them, the Ministry, all burned and became dust, had nothing to offer him. Thus far, he had allowed himself to toy with the idea of being a Death Eater only in the liminal state between wakefulness and sleep. But now there was nothing else – only they could give him what was due to him, what he’d been denied from the day he was born.

_ Lily isn’t stupid, she’ll come to understand one day, that this world we’re living in doesn’t care about people like us, _ he told himself. He knew Lily hated them – but if given the chance, he could show her…

…He showed her, alright. Sitting in Dumbledore’s office for what would be the second of countless times, his mind not comprehending what was happening, and helpless, quite as helpless as he had been that first time, unable to think with the knowledge that he had said the words that set the Dark Lord on the path to Lily’s destruction.

“While you remain – forgive me – rather an unimportant Death Eater, I don’t expect that Voldemort (Severus jumped) will spend much time interrogating you, but the time will come and you must be ready. Do you know what Occlumency is?”

A brief silence followed.

“No, naturally, you don’t.”

Dumbledore started explaining it, and Severus listened half-heartedly, for he was too worried, too scared, too angry with himself to think.

“We had a deal, Severus. You would give me anything to protect the Potters. I’m disappointed to learn that ‘anything’ does not cover paying attention.”

“I’m sorry,” Severus mumbled back.

“No matter. Legilimens.”

Severus was mortified – Dumbledore cut through his mind like a knife through butter that had been sitting in the sun.

“I don’t expect that Voldemort will respect your privacy more than I have if he should ever believe you know something worth keeping from him.” 

For all of Dumbledore’s brutality, Severus was grateful that he had made no comment on what he had seen.

Present Day

The succession of assorted memories, images, and vague sensations stopped abruptly as Christina couldn’t help but to ask: “If it’s second nature to you to use legilimency, why did you say the incantation now, why is it different?”

Severus took mental note of this quality of Christina’s: The force of her curiosity was such that she could repel the intrusion.

“Magic affects the caster as well. It is unpredictable, cannot be tamed – some even class these branches of magic as Dark. What one does out of the force of habit and instinct won’t accomplish the same thing as what one does deliberately, and furthermore,” he added pedantically, “it is useful to be able to read people without their knowledge.”

As she took in the meaning of his words (and wondered why the Hogwarts curriculum never expanded on such things), her mouth opened slightly, her eyes strayed to the side…

“Your loveliness will not distract me,” he said with a reluctant smile. “Again.”

Sure enough, his black eyes met hers and glittered. “Legilimens.”

It was much more powerful this time, memories of herself with the family’s dog, of her Sorting, of the first night in the Slytherin girls’ dormitory, wide-awake though exhausted, homesick yet brimming with anticipation, herself at Madam Puddifoot’s seeing Severus for the first time since she had graduated…

“Enjoying the stroll down memory lane, are you? You do remember that you need to repel me?”

She blushed – she hadn’t thought about these things in years, and she had to admit it was not unpleasant to look back to those times. Severus clearly did not share the sentiment.

“Legilimens.”

In his anger, the effect of the spell was much less pleasant. A dorm mate attempting to knock her off her broom because earlier that week she had called her a nosy prat, because she had attempted to peek at her stuff, an older Gryffindor obstructing her path to class “because she’s a little Slytherin and they’re all wicked”, realizing that the thoughtful healers of St. Mungo’s hadn’t alerted anyone of the sudden increase in witches who ended up pregnant with no knowledge of how that happened…  _ relax, _ she told herself,  _ it’s over, it’s all been over for years.  _ She returned to the present, and the black eyes twinkled in approval.

“Very good. Don’t let me get so far the next time.”

It barely felt like magic – it involved no use of a wand, no incantation, no change to the outside world, and yet Christina felt it, a strange new power that she always had but never appreciated.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus! Please leave reviews, and tell me if you want to see this continue! And sorry again <3

“As practice, clear your mind before you fall asleep. The mind is at its most vulnerable then. You can expect it to become more vulnerable before it becomes stronger.”

Ever the diligent, obedient student, Christina practiced earnestly, only to find out that silencing her mind even briefly demanded herculean effort, and the next day, feeling very unrested from her sleep, she felt the full extent of her vulnerability as Wormtail saw an opening to taunt her once again.

“You have dark circles. What happened? Couldn’t sleep? Finally realized you’ve been claimed by a worthless oily knob?”

“I’ve been claimed by Severus, not you,” Christina retorted, realizing her first mistake was to leave her wand up the stairs. She could not wait for the school year to begin – what excuse could the Dark Lord have to force Wormtail’s company on Severus then?

“I hope he has told you the truth, for your sake,” he insinuated, his tone and expression smug with pity. “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t – it’s not like you can change anything now.”

Had she not been particularly suggestible, she might not have risen to the bait, but as it was, her anger flared up immediately. She had not slept well, and in her dreams, she was much older, and still nothing but an acolyte, still pursuing an ill-defined end, still living in this house with Wormtail…

“What are you talking about?” She asked.

“Where do I begin? You want to be a true Death Eater, and you’ve somehow convinced yourself that Snivvy actually cares about you, that he’s your safest bet for climbing up? Very few people know what I know, even the Death Eaters… did I not tell you? I was the one who helped bring the Dark Lord back from the dead – I alone listened to him, all these long days, weeks and months… how it was ‘the Half-Blood Snape who brought me the prophecy that was my downfall, who I next saw serving Dumbledore while I was possessing Quirrell,’ his words, of course. I heard the Dark Lord dreaming of how he would take his revenge on him, and I was there when Snivvy returned, though we both thought we would have to hunt him down, and he (Wormtail could barely suppress his laughter) came to us; not even I could believe him so stupid, and mind you, this is the Snivellus who had once gotten himself nearly killed by a werewolf.”

Christina’s face was white with shock and Wormtail continued speaking.

“I watched, you know. I watched his punishment. You think I’m only a servant, that I’m so low, but the Dark Lord gave me a magical hand. Your precious Severus would have been in St. Mungo’s next to the Longbottoms if he had been subjected to the Cruciatus for one more minute. The Dark Lord does not love him. And there’s another thing you don’t know.”

_ Why did I let this toad talk to me? If I hadn’t forgotten my wand I would have Vanished his bloody tongue, _ Christina thought miserably, as Wormtail informed her that he had never seen a single acolyte advance to the rank of Death Eater; the Dark Lord’s intention was surely to use her as another source of information on Severus or on the Ministry and then to be “assigned” to someone else or disposed of altogether, “like that other sorry bit of Ministry scum, Bertha Jorkins.”

“You’re in a right state,” Severus remarked upon his return from Hogwarts, where he had gone to prepare the inventory list for the year.

Christina tried to clear her mind and control her emotions, but again she found herself unduly and disproportionately affected by Wormtail and his lies, both by their content and by the fact that Severus had given her nothing, no piece of solid evidence to throw in the rat’s face to shut him up.

“No need to be alarmed, Christina. Some initial adverse reaction is to be expected. Are you ready to continue?”

Continue? It did not cross her mind for a moment that they would continue today. Her thoughts replayed in an endless loop: What “prophecy”? What did it all have to do with Jorkins? Worst of all, the Dark Lord had used the Cruciatus on him? And he might be forced to give her away, to somebody else? And what werewolf?

Her thoughts were so close to the surface, and her emotions so strong, that he read her like an open book. White with anger, he called Wormtail up to the bedroom.

“Wormtail, over here, now!”

The pest did not respect Severus’s authority, and Severus was all the more happy to stomp down the stairs, his wand pointed in front of him, dragging Christina roughly with him as he descended.

“I distinctly remember telling you not to attempt anything with  _ my _ acolyte. I suppose you enjoyed yourself, proving to yourself that you’re still protected by the inexplicable fondness of an authority figure? You have outlasted your usefulness to the Dark Lord, Wormtail, and believe you me, I could easily explain why killing you was necessary. You have revealed crucial information to an acolyte, who has not been Marked, who is still in thrall to the Ministry, and it is only thanks to your uncanny luck that Christina’s faith in the Dark Lord is true. Tell me, Wormtail, shall I summon him?”

Wormtail seemed on the verge of wetting himself, crouching low with clattering teeth. “N… no, Severus, I was only –“

A curse hit him in the chest and he fell backwards and bit on his hand to suppress a scream. As it was the metallic hand he had gone for, his teeth clinked on the metal and did not grip it, and Wormtail could not keep from screaming after all.

“I have waited so long to do that,” Severus whispered. “Do not test me further. Christina, come.”

Back in the bedroom, with Severus pacing across the room that was much too small to contain his rage, and shooting random hexes at nothing in particular, Christina began to believe the worst.

“So it’s true then?”

“The only reason I didn’t actually kill him is that there’s nothing left for him to say that would make things worse,” Severus answered, barely able to keep his voice down.

“But it still makes no sense!” Christina cried.

“If I obliviate you and send you away – but no, he broke through the memory charms on Jorkins, there’s nothing, nothing…”

Another curse shot through his wand, apparently involuntarily, as it broke the glass window. To be more accurate, the glass was not broken so much as had been pulverized, and Christina’s  _ Reparo _ did nothing.

Christina wondered, if the Occlumens between them was reduced to this, what could she do, how could she help, but without believing she could do anything, she went over to Severus and put her hands on his face and forced him to look at her as she said she will practice all day, every day, until she could keep his secrets.

“There’s not much of a choice in the matter anymore,” he said, shaking as he held her closer. “Wormtail betrayed and killed one woman I loved, and he is not about to do it again.”

Resolve pierced through the fear and the anguish that left his body in uncontrollable shakes. Christina was far too preoccupied with promising that she would do everything in her power, that she could handle hexes and curses, that she was not afraid of anything and cared only about Severus, to fully take in what she had heard, but as she tried to empty her mind (which came much easier now that she had a clear purpose), it came to her like a wave: Love?


	16. Chapter 16

The next morning, Christina thought an owl flew through the broken window, but it was a Phoenix.

“Dumbledore’s got it running errands for him like a common owl, innit,” Severus said, a northern accent slipping through again, while Christina let it peck bread out of her hand. Christina had learned that Severus became more refined after his first cup of tea.

“Are phoenixes supposed to eat bread?” She asked after it had left.

“They’re  _ immortal, _ Ms. Nettleship.”

“Right,” she mumbled, flushed, and Severus opened the envelope and took in the meaning of the letter in one glance.

“How joyous, my life-long dream has finally come true,” he said as he tossed the letter on the floor.

“You don’t seem very pleased,” Christina remarked.

“I might have been able to fool Bellatrix with the notion that my grand ambition was to teach Defense, Detective, but surely you weren’t hoodwinked by that? Never mind that this means I’ll have to tolerate the presence of one Horace Slughorn – I believe you two have met?”

“NO!” Christina gasped. “Not the fat walrus again! And isn’t the defense post cursed?”

“Trust Dumbledore to use the curse to his own ends. The manner in which I will leave my post has already been decided. I will be promoted to Headmaster once the Dark Lord takes over.”

“This doesn’t sound like much of a curse – our first-year teacher got the first case of dragonpox in 30 years.”

“It’s a matter of perspective, as you know full-well. A brain-swelling curse would kill you, but could do wonders for others,” Severus said thickly, gesturing in the general direction of the living room where Wormtail was surely still drooling on the sofa.

At the mention of the pest, Christina remembered everything that happened the night before, and everything it meant.

“There’s no point concealing anything from you anymore. The reason the Dark Lord almost allowed himself to be apprehended at the Hall of Prophecy was because he had wanted to hear the entirety of a prophecy I had delivered only part of to him. This prophecy was the reason he had hunted down the Potters and tried to kill (his speech slowed down, his distaste almost palpable) the prodigious Boy-Who-Lived. I had delivered this prophecy not knowing what would happen, and – you’ve heard him talk about the time I asked him for a woman – that woman was Lily Potter, and in asking him to spare her, I made it so the prophecy would come true.”

Christina’s eyes were moist again, her face was full of admiration for Severus as he recounted his most shameful act.

“I did not know this would happen. I was a faithful Death Eater, and trust me when I tell you it was not what I had wanted. I do not deserve your admiration.”

1971

Severus sat and watched nervously as his fellow first years walked across the Great Hall to be Sorted. Lily had been sorted first and Severus began to reconsider, but then, those boys from the train had been sorted into Gryffindor as well, and he didn’t want to share his dorm with them… he also told himself it didn’t matter where Lily went. They were best friends – so  _ what _ if she was a Gryffindor? They would make new friends. Besides, he had no “brave” deeds to his name and he didn’t  _ want _ any – he wanted to be great, and House Slytherin promised him that… he saw himself, in his mind’s eye, dressed in the finest robes, perhaps receiving an Order of Merlin for some invention... and Merlin himself was a Slytherin, after all, so what better way was there?

Yes, Slytherin was the house for him.  _ Just look at them, clapping and cheering for one another, and look at the Gryffindors, booing at the other Slytherins and nearly pushing one another off their seats. _

He could swear an older Slytherin, a prefect, even smiled at him.

When the Deputy Headmistress called his name, he walked confidently across the Great Hall – as confidently as he could – and put on the ancient hat.

“If it’s greatness that you seek, the answer is clear.”

It didn’t even give him time to answer back, not that he would have.

“Slytherin!” The Hat cried out, and Severus walked toward his house mates, and Lily smiled at him, and his prefect clapped him on the back… greatness dangled in front of him, ready to be grasped, like an apple he could smell, could feel its juices running down his chin even before he sunk his teeth into it.

1980

_ Greatness. _

How greatness played into what Severus’s life has become he did not know. He did not feel particularly great when he was dangled in the air by his own bleeding spell and displayed for the wicked amusement of the assorted brave, clever, and loyal. He definitely did not feel great when Lily was endangered, and when she was killed, he felt like there ought to have been a new Hogwarts house just for people like him; stupid, treacherous, cowardly.  _ You could have dormed with Black and died yourself and none of this would have happened! _ He thought. He did not know, for that matter, how that other trait Slytherin prized - ambition - played into his life either. It was never his desire to return to Hogwarts. And yet, he was made Head of Slytherin, the person in charge of cultivating the house values in his students and steering them in the best direction.

_ Not that you know the first thing about that. _

The castle might as well have been Azkaban, for how much he wanted to be there, and he was grateful that he joined the staff in the middle of the year, at least – he was spared having to sit through the Sorting and watch lives potentially being destroyed because of a sentient hat. He wondered how hard it would be to lay his hands on it and burn it.

Present Day

As the years went by, Severus realized, to his chagrin and fathomless resentment, that greatness rarely showed itself in obvious ways. At eleven, he could not see this – he could envision only a straight path toward well-defined ends. But he was much older now, had seen much more of the world even though so much of his life had been spent (he told himself not to think the word “wasted”) in this bloody castle.

He could have been the best potioneer in England, maybe Europe. He could have re-written the textbooks, written his own theory book; he could have launched a new discipline, or done so many things.

But there was already a “best potioneer in England,” there were already people doing what he wanted to do, and though he may have been able to dethrone them in time, he was given something else, a path to greatness that only he could walk, that he would be the best at by definition, but that he had to be truly good at despite the lack of competition. He would have to set his own standards  _ and _ meet them, and he would have to do it alone. As far as he was aware, there was no Order of Merlin for protecting the wretched and lawless spawn of wretched and lawless scum, but he knew now that only the most superficial and ultimately meaningless brand of greatness was defined by accolades. After all, fucking  _ Wormtail _ had an Order of Merlin.

His mind was disciplined, his heart was set. Only he was in position to set the cursed prophecy off – and only he was in position to make sure it would work out like it ought to. He had longed for power, freedom, and safety, but he had learned that true power meant a life dedicated to the service of duty at all costs. He did not shirk from it. Nothing else mattered. Greatness was not a matter of choice.

House Slytherin had shaped him, and his life – but looking at Christina, who had made amazing strides in Occlumency, he knew he had something to be proud of no matter how the war turned out. He had taught at least one truly great Slytherin.

Though the heat was still oppressive, summer was almost over, and Christina welcomed September, for it would mean a change of scenery. She noted how not long ago she resented having been stationed in Hogsmeade and how she now longed to return there – not for the town itself, but because Wormtail wouldn’t be coming with them. Yes, she relished the prospect of sending him away, his head full of false information that the Dark Lord would extract out of him with ease, despite his objections.  _ Yes, Severus is faithful to you, and so is the girl,  _ he would be forced to acknowledge, before he would summarily be sent elsewhere to litter up someone else’s house. Hopefully, someone who had a cat.

Her hatred for him was limitless, the list of his sins incomprehensible. The rat’s pitifulness was matched only by his cruelty, and they compounded one another to the point that he was unfit to even be a Death Eater, despite being the only one whose faithfulness was virtually guaranteed by a lack of options. He had participated in tormenting Severus with Potter and Black, only to then betray one and then the other, murdering innocent Muggles in the bargain. He had resurrected the Dark Lord and nursed him back to health, he had murdered a Hogwarts student, he had overplayed his hand so much that the best he could hope for in life was to successfully deceive Christina into exchanging sexual favours for information, and even then, he still relished in the fond memories of his school days with the friends he himself had condemned to death and imprisonment.

Still, even he had some purpose, for Christina could not conceive of a better subject on whom to test her newfound control of her emotions. She felt her rage and disgust transform into contempt, which could much more easily be concealed and ignored behind an equanimous grin.

Severus had devised a most pleasurable test for her, which involved constant eye contact that would normally have made her uncomfortable even had he not also been three-knuckles deep inside her, a vaguely sinister smirk dancing on his lips as he tried to provoke her even with his words, into allowing him to see anything, anything at all; after her defenses finally collapsed spectacularly in a glorious roar, he comforted her by saying that even he probably could not contain this much raw emotion, and indeed, he did not expect that she would need to.

She had even managed to conceal her attempt to fail on purpose so as to be forced to retake the test – and then the shame at having come up with such a plan. This was, after all, life and death, no matter how stoic Severus attempted to appear.

“The next level is choosing what to show rather than concealing,” he told her, and it also meant it was time for them to work on her cover story.


	17. Chapter 17

The end of summer could not come soon enough. Christina breathed a sigh of relief as she packed her belongings and prepared for the start of the school year – Hogsmeade might have been a bore, but it was better than Spinner’s End, and Hogwarts didn’t have such a horrible rat problem.

It also meant she would get to see the interior of Severus’s quarters, something she had dreamed of ever since she first saw him.

On August 24, Wormtail was unceremoniously sent back to the Malfoy Manor and Severus and Christina returned to Hogwarts to prepare for the coming school year.

It had been so long since she’d seen those hallways, and she trailed behind Severus, who swept through them as though completely unfazed by the change of scenery. “Faster,” he barked at her, and she hastened to catch up with him. A secret passage led her to that place she’d always dreamed of, that lay behind a nondescript dark mahogany door with a very subtle engraving of a snake. He stopped in his tracks as soon as they reached it.

“I need to set a password for you. Let’s see…”

Having finally decided that “Lime Tree” was neutral enough and would never occur to anybody to try, he pulled out a silver key with the same serpent engraving and opened the door.

The Slytherin Head of House’s private quarters were magnificent; Christina was the one who stopped in her tracks as soon as she registered their grandeur and splendor. Severus chuckled. “Wormtail and his friends might have thought they knew everything about this place… the staff still has some privileges even they didn’t suspect.”

This was not just a room with an adjoining bathroom (a luxury Christina had learned to do without at Spinner’s End, with the unexpected benefit of having become very adept at vanishing and cleaning charms) – here, Severus had a private library, a parlor, and of course, a luxurious bedroom. “Wasted on me, I’m afraid,” he said fondly. “If you’d like… I’m supposed to have my own elf assigned to me, but I prefer to take care of myself. It does not mean you must choose the same, if you don’t…”

Severus obviously never brought anybody here, Christina realized. He, who transformed chameleon-like to fit into whatever scenery he was put against, had no idea how to handle this situation. He tried to channel his inner Lucius Malfoy, but didn’t seem to have an inner Lucius Malfoy.

“I’ve always wondered what it looked like,” she said, both because it was true and to relieve the tension.

“Would you say I’ve done well for myself?” He asked her.

The floor had black marble and emerald tiles, a silver chandelier hung above them and with a flourish of his wand, Severus lit the two dozen or so candles that it housed. Haphazard reflections shone on the floor and on the ornate mirror.

“It’s certainly an improvement over Spinner’s End, and the only place in this castle that never inspired pyromania in me.”

“It’s beautiful,” Christina said earnestly.

“I never had much company - is there anything you’d like?”

Christina could see it - a vase of white roses and orchids, a touch of brighter color here or there, could make these rooms perfect. More perfect still was the unlikely vision of Severus Snape, tumbling over his words in an attempt to make her feel welcome.

***

Severus reacted with alarm when a wolf patronus disturbed Dumbledore’s speech before the Sorting Ceremony. Christina, whose presence Severus explained away by saying he believed an experienced Auror could be helpful for the students, “and with Black dead her case closed itself,” sat at the teachers’ table and tried to pretend not to be bothered by the staring and murmuring. It did not please her at all to realize Severus would leave her alone. She watched the first years being sorted, and listened to Dumbledore speak.  _ If I hadn’t known, would I have guessed he was a dying man? _ She wondered.

Draco, the very young Death Eater she had already met, seemed supremely satisfied with himself.  _ Shit, he knows - thinks - I’m one of them. _ He didn’t seem to spare Christina a single thought, unlike many others: He glanced ravenously at Dumbledore, surely picturing himself towering over his dead body in a matter of weeks.

Severus returned well after the Sorting, with one bloody-faced Harry Potter in tow. Draco’s satisfaction seemed only to grow.

“I ran into a colleague of yours,” Severus told Christina before she could voice her concerns about Draco. “Tonks. That Patronus was hers. I suppose the old adage is true, one man’s patronus is another man’s…”

“Boggart.”

Christina had always thought Tonks had quite a bit more brains than  _ that,  _ given everything she had heard about the werewolf from Severus and even Wormtail. The sheer unlikeliness of the news drove all previous concerns out of her mind.

“Yes, detective, boggart. It would save a lot of time if you learned Legilimency,” Severus said, an edge in his voice. She could sense his tension, and she did not blame him - he did not need to be reminded of Remus Lupin on top of having to get reaccustomed to Dumbledore’s presence, Harry’s presence, and his teaching duties.

“I don’t mean to throw stones, but isn’t she much too young?” Christina wondered aloud, as she removed Severus’s cloak and rubbed his shoulders (her suspicion was confirmed - he was extremely tense). “She always looked up to Moody. Maybe there was something there, now that I think about it.”

“Hard as it is to be around Moody,” he answered with a sigh as Christina dug her hand into his flesh, “I would never accuse him of being an (he groaned) ineffectual coward.”

“Must be a fondness for men with scars who are too old for her.”

Severus turned his head to her and raised his eyebrow as if to provoke, but seemed to give up on the attempt.

“If I must explain the inexplicable, I’d say she’s taking after her mother. A Black, you see. Married a Muggle-born. It was quite a scandal, people suspected she fell pregnant while still a student, her parents disowned her. Nymphadora is a mere half-blood, so I don’t suppose she could bring much more shame to her family than she did by existing, unless she married outside her species.”

Christina couldn’t help but to raise her own eyebrow at that. She was grateful that he could not see that, as she was still working on his back.

“Must be it. Maybe I should try and talk with her… warn her, or… we were never very close, but -”

“You’re an Auror pretending to be an aspiring Death Eater pretending to be a teacher’s assistant, all so you could have the occasional snog with me, Ms. Nettleship, I’m not sure you’re in any position to give anyone advice. Lower.”

Christina didn’t need to be a Legilimens to guess exactly what Severus was thinking as she obeyed his instruction.


	18. Chapter 18

“You are very fortunate,” Severus explained to the first-year students sitting their very first Defense lesson, “that you will be learning the foundations from me. You might have heard of the high turnover rate this post has had, meaning many students have sat their O.W.L. without ever having learned the basics.”

Severus explained to the gaping 11 year old children that it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between Dark magic and defensive magic, that while obvious examples of either exist, they are – for the most part – irrelevant, and that true defense against the dark means always thinking ahead and knowing what to use to prevent the need to take more extreme and more corrupting measures later. Christina doubted that even she could have understood this at eleven, but the earnestness in Severus’s performance must have got the point across.

The second-year students were instructed, first and foremost, to forget everything they had learned from last year’s teacher. “I can only hope to undo some of the damage my predecessor has caused with her less than nuanced notions of defensive magic,” he said, and Christina wondered what could inspire such a lack of collegiality, and how bad could she have been to make the students react so favourably to subtle jabs at her. “Fortunately, even people like Ms. Umbridge could be useful, if only as an example of what happens when one adheres too strictly to silly rules and senseless dichotomies instead of independent thought, and attempts to control and subdue that which cannot be contained. She ended up attempting to cast unforgivable curses on students, an act I understand but cannot endorse, and being driven out of this school by a herd of centaurs.”

The third-year students learned that the teacher who taught them in their first year, while one of the most competent teachers in recent memory, was also a highly dangerous Death Eater in disguise who had received the Dementor’s Kiss, “and if that does not tell you everything you need to know about our subject, I doubt that anything will.” Immediately after that, he demanded all of them to tell him what they learned from this experience, and to write an essay about detecting impostors and protecting themselves from having their own identities stolen. “If it helps you develop a stronger understanding of who you are, you’re welcome,” he said briskly.

The fourth-year students had apparently learned the basics from the fourth member of Potter’s gang, and Severus relished in lamenting the poor state of their magical education. “You have studied under a textbook Dark creature for an entire year. How many of you were able to tell him for what he was?”

No hand was raised.

“Precisely. You believe that danger cannot befall you here, and you did not look for it. My job is to prepare you for everything, including the deepest betrayal.”

The fifth-year students all learned that their first-year teacher was a lesson on the importance of knowing one’s limits, and added: “I hope that no student I have taught will venture on a quest to find glory only to find themselves damaged beyond repair when, inevitably, the jig will be up. I hope that you will acquire skill, not the appearance of it.”

“My father said Lockhart is hiding in North India and that the one in St. Mungo’s is a patient he had transfigured,” a blonde student said serenely. The redhead sitting next to her rolled her eyes, and Severus, who was clearly used to this brand of input from her, merely replied that like always, her father is assuming that everything that isn’t physically impossible must be true, and that she would do well to learn to think for herself about such things. He seemed fond of her – Christina could not imagine that anybody else would have gotten away with interrupting him to say something so outlandish. “If the class is interested in a field trip to St. Mungo’s to verify Professor Lockhart’s identity and learn more about the effects of Dark Magic,” he suggested, “I’m sure that could be arranged.”

Even with the full knowledge of everything that had happened on the night the Dark Lord was first defeated, Christina couldn’t help but to be a little curious about the real Harry Potter. To her surprise, this year was spared a scathing speech about their previous teachers, and she made a mental note of asking Severus about this omission. The real Harry Potter was underwhelming, as underwhelming as she had been told he would be. He  _ hated _ Severus, and Christina had to tell herself that she couldn’t tell Harry Potter that he owed everything from his life to his fame to the man he looked at with such bitterness.  _ And if you feel it, imagine what Severus must be feeling - after all, he felt everything when he looked at you… _ Just by looking at Harry she knew he did not have the making of an Occlumens.

Though they were practicing non-verbal spells, the air buzzed with whispered murmurs and the occasional frustrated groan, and only went quiet when Harry said: “There’s no need to call me Sir, Professor.”

Christina left the room and slammed the door behind her. If she had stayed there for one more second everything would have been undone, she was sure of it.

***

“Detention, Potter,” Severus said. He set him only one detention, because he felt that setting more than the bare minimum was more punishing for Severus than it was for Harry. After all, this would cut into his precious time with Christina.

He resolved to make sure that although it would be brief, Harry would pay for this. It would be a matter of quality over quantity.

In the back of his mind, he also wondered how _Potter_ could have been the only one in the year to earn an O. Yes, he supposedly defeated or escaped the Dark Lord five times, but wasn’t it a more crucial skill not to run headfirst into unnecessary danger? _You would think that, wouldn’t you?_ A voice in his head told him. _How would you know?_

He pushed it out of his mind and carried on with the lesson. Granger, at least, had managed it - with her knack for following orders and Potter’s knack for not following orders, maybe, possibly, they could make one decent wizard, although what sort of match they would be to the Dark Lord remained a frightening thought.

***

After a long day spent fuming on Severus’s behalf, Christina finally heard the door creak, and Severus entered his quarters.

“Can you believe the child’s audacity?!” Christina started, without preamble.

“I very much can,” he answered with a sigh as he hung his cloak on the wall and bent down to remove his boots.

“After everything you’ve done for him, and he thinks he can get away with -”

“Knows.”

“Excuse me?”

“He doesn’t think. He knows. Now more so than ever. He knows he is the  _ chosen one, _ and that he’ll never be expelled. I think the first clue would have been when Dumbledore intervened in person to prevent his expulsion last year despite years of rule-breaking and impertinence.”

“You have been tolerating this for five years?”

Seeing someone getting angry on his behalf made it easier for Severus to deal with his frustration and contempt, though not nearly easily enough. He jutted his jaw and gritted his teeth, but her presence calmed him somewhat.

“The cards are stacked against him. His father being who he was, and with him finding himself famous… Dumbledore seems to encourage it. But it shouldn’t surprise me. He encouraged his father, who wasn’t even prophesied to destroy the Dark Lord.”

As he spoke, he grew less angry and more… something else. It frightened Christina, who felt she might have done more harm than good.

“How can you tolerate this? For him? Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

“I took a vow when he was an infant, when he had yet to prove his character one way or the other. I have never assumed he would be any different than he is, although I certainly had hoped.”

He noticed a herbology book that lay open on the nightstand. “I thought it might help me relax,” she explained. “It didn’t work.”

“Next time, and if I know Potter the opportunity will present itself soon enough, you should use this to practice Occlumency.”

_ Of course, _ she thought. Somehow, in the excitement of starting the new academic year, she had forgotten about the most important thing.

“How can you control your emotions when he’s being like this?” She asked.

“My… distaste, if you will, for him is the only safe emotion I genuinely feel, Christina.” Christina had long understood that when he was annoyed he called her “Ms. Nettleship”, and when he was especially aggrieved he called her “detective”; she did not expect to be addressed thus at this moment. He might as well have called her “my beloved sugarplum.” She looked up at his eyes, and he looked sideways, and suddenly found something very urgent he needed to do on the corner, and he looked much younger than he was.

_ I won’t bear it if I’m wrong, I won’t bear it.  _ And yet, not knowing was worse, even worse. If she could only tell him that she loved him he would be forced to say it back, or tell her he does not, and that would be the end of it. She sighed, and tried to control her emotions now.

“Severus?”

“Yes?”

“How come you had nothing to say about the teacher who taught Defense when the 6th-years were starting out?”

“That would be Quirrell. Died. The “chosen one” - by that I mean the force that protected him against the Dark Lord in the first place - killed him. I can’t be expected to remind Potter of another accomplishment he received undeserved credit for, do you disagree?”

After a brief pause, he continued speaking, apparently to himself. “He had been possessed by the Dark Lord. All year, he had been trying to get his hands on something, something that would have restored the Dark Lord three years sooner. Dumbledore hid it here, you see; and he made it so Harry and no one else would be able to retrieve it from its hiding place. I forget the details. To study the force that protects him, I suppose, and test the boy - otherwise I admit I am beneath attempting to decipher his thinking process,” he ended on a bitter note.

He seemed distant and lost in thought. “And me.”

“You what?”

“Test me. He told me to keep an eye on Quirrell, knowing that Quirrell wouldn’t be able to retrieve this object… I had come to his office to complain about the boy, and he ordered me to watch him… He - the Dark Lord - made sure to remind me of my obedience to Dumbledore.”

Severus extinguished all light in the room with a smooth motion and Christina was sure he did not want her to see his face, and could not keep talking.

It was as good a time as any to practice Occlumency, in the absolute blackness. He breathed next to her but she could tell he was pretending to be asleep.  _ In a few short months, you will kill him. You will kill him. You will kill Dumbledore in a few short months and he will be dead, _ she told herself over and over again until she fell asleep.


	19. Chapter 19

Ms. Sprout smiled fondly at Christina as she made her way through the garden path to the greenhouse that was home to the nocturnal magical plants. Christina had a terrible secret – Potions was never her favourite subject; she only worked as hard as she did because she wanted to impress her teacher.

Herbology, however, was one of the subjects that came naturally to her.

“I was wondering when I might see you in my greenhouse,” Pomona said. “I was delighted to see you back on school grounds.”

“Thanks, Ms. Sprout,” Christina smiled.

She inhaled deeply and a dozen different scents hit her from every direction. There was something special about the nocturnal plants… they didn’t need much care, but they rewarded it handsomely, and since they naturally needed little light, they were most suitable for houses.

The plant called Circe’s Web was excellent for capturing magical and non-magical insects and pests; the Luminous Lotus leaves and petals shone on their own and made every room beautiful. Then, of course, there was the rare and precious magical tree that could only grow in the presence of love. Christina had worked on a case once, of a swindler who somehow had bred a plant that looked very like it, to convince rich wizards of the truthfulness of her feelings – but she had rarely seen the real thing.

“Is that a…”

“Yes it is! I see you never stopped studying your herbology!”

It didn’t take a detective to realize that if this could grow here, old Ms. Sprout had her own life, and as the plant reacted to Christina’s presence, she knew she had just given herself away.

Pomona had always been sensitive and Christina could always appreciate it. “I expect this to be a good opportunity for the seven-years, you know,” she said, clearing her throat. “Might dissuade them from getting married too fast.”

“Good thinking,” Christina said absent-mindedly, and wondered about the effects of Occlumency on this class of plants. She didn’t know how she could ask without telling Severus why she was asking, and figured she would have to study this on her own.

***

Christina had become accomplished at repelling Severus from her mind. He cast the most powerful Legilimens he could on her, even had her drink Veritaserum, and yet she was able to show him nothing but an impregnable darkness behind her expressionless face.

It was time to move on to deception rather than concealment. “What you’ve achieved would have been useful for an Auror or an Order member, not a double agent, what you so stupidly volunteered to become.”

Ordinarily, Christina would have let Severus glimpse into her mind and see her rebel against this notion – it wasn’t exactly fair to be accused of having done exactly what Severus had done. But she wanted to make progress, and so she merely assented.

“Fabricating memories outright is nearly impossible and requires substantial preparation, and more time than we might have. It’s also not as useful as one might expect –“

“Because he could read the truth in someone else’s mind.”

“Exactly. You must feel what the person you’re pretending to be would have felt. Christina, where does your loyalty lie?”

_ With you,  _ she admitted to herself. Ostensibly, with the Ministry, of course – but when she asked herself why she wanted the Dark Lord to be destroyed, she had to admit she did not care one way or the other whether the Minister was Fudge, Scrimgeour, or whoever the Dark Lord might appoint. All she cared about was that in the wake of his destruction, Severus would be free.

Soul-searching was not conducive to Occlumency, she found out. “With me… but I am but a means to an end, Christina. You and I never met outside of Hogwarts before I claimed you. You came to him because you wanted to serve him, you heard he had returned and wanted to offer your allegiance to the winning side. You’re here because he ordered you to be here, remember?”

She wanted to rebel against this perversion of the truth, but the urge subsided before she could say anything. He smiled a crooked smile at her without opening his mouth.

“And you, to me, are even less: A prize for not being one of those who had disappointed him at the Department of Mystery, a token of his forgiveness and generosity, and proof that I am well and truly over the last one. I am meant to use you, certainly not share my innermost secrets with you, certainly not the person I went to to ‘heal my soul’”.

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her closer to him.

“Fabricating memories is almost impossible and, if I’m being honest, Christina, why would I, when I can make real ones,” he said, and his hand travelled down her blouse. “It’s a matter of strict necessity, you understand.”

“I understand,” she smiled, and she prepared to give the performance of a lifetime, and if it just so happened to have more than a grain of truth to it, it was all the better.

This  _ should  _ have been degrading. With anybody else, this would have been. The extenuating circumstances should have only made this even worse, since everything that had just transpired between them was meant for the benefit of the Dark Lord. “You know what you must do if you are to have any hope of ever being Marked, if you wish to prove you are no longer Ministry scum,” he told her.

She gave herself to him for his pleasure, and he handled her with roughness. “I might grow bored with you,” he made sure to add, and she made sure to demonstrate how much she hoped he would not. All – not even because he wanted to do it, but for the sake of her cover.

It  _ should  _ have left her cold, possibly should have made her regret. But it did not – there was no faking the pleasure she had given him, she was sure of it. Just as she could not Occlude her pleasure, he could not fake what she made him feel, and there was no degradation in that.

_ That’s why he won’t let me say it, _ she realized finally.  _ It would be nearly impossible to keep beneath the surface. _

Her own command of her psyche was still not so strong that she could stop herself from heaving. The full weight of the choice he had made, to live his life as he had, crushed her own heart. To create despicable memories, to pretend that they were not despicable, to avoid happiness lest he endanger whoever had made her happy… “How could you,” she started asking, but could not speak through the tears. She wanted to ask him: “How could you have endured all this alone, all for Dumbledore?”

Severus extrapolated something else, however. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have. We won’t do it again, I promise.” He held her naked body to his with tenderness and stroked her, and it only made her feel worse.  _ And what did I ever do, that I deserved to fall in love with someone who decided to live this life? _

She did not want to tremble in his arms, and hear him apologizing for anything. She couldn’t tell him what she felt, and even if she could, the facts would remain the same. “Don’t ever apologize to me, you fucking knob,” she said, as her frustration and helplessness to change anything overcame her. “Aren’t you a Legilimens?” She added.

Her eyes had swollen, and she strained to open them as wide as she could.  _ I love you, I love you, I love you, and you can do this to me as much as you want, Dark Lord or none, and I love you, and you can’t tell me not to feel it, you just can’t. _

He seemed struck. After deliberating for some time – a harrowing length of time – he started speaking slowly. “When you’ve mastered Occlumency, you should consider learning Legilimency as well. It’s – ah – useful.”

Christina concentrated with all her might on thinking:  _ Does this mean what I hope it means? _

He gave an almost imperceptible nod.


	20. Chapter 20

Christina had never been a stranger to insomnia, but ever since she got involved with Severus, it got worse, almost as though she had subconsciously decided to mimic his sleeping patterns. He was a very light sleeper, and worried that she might disturb him with her tossing and turning, she quietly put on a nightgown and slippers and went for a walk, hoping she would tire herself out.

By the light of her wand, she saw an unhappy-looking and familiar figure. Tonks turned around and momentarily tensed up (“Oi, wotcher!”), but lowered her wand. “Oh, it’s you. Alright?”

Christina figured it would be rude not to come closer, though she had hoped not to be caught in her dark blue nightgown. If Tonks was stationed here, after all, it would not do well to antagonize her for no reason. “Hi Tonks,” she said, exactly cheerfully enough to not come across as weird at his hour.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Not really. How have you been?”

Tonks mumbled something as she walked straight into a suit of armor. The resulting din was enough to wake up the whole castle, and it certainly drowned out her reply.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I was fine, for crying out-“

“Clearly,” Christina cut her off, and noted to herself that it wasn’t just his sleeping patterns she’d been imitating.

“I’m the one who’s supposed to be here, Nettleship. Shouldn’t you be joining Death Eaters on raids?”

“I’d only asked how you were, Tonks, and if it helps you at all, I don’t actually care, I was just trying to make conversation. Also, Christina is fine,  _ my _ parents don’t hate me.”

Tonks seemed appeased, or at least, to have understood that she had crossed a line. “I’m sorry, it’s been pretty hard actually.”

“No worries,” Christina murmured, and wondered how she might wriggle out of this conversation.  _ Do I have to ask her what it’s about? _ She wondered.

“How about you, then? Odd place your mission took you.”

Thinking on her feet, Christina realized that to an outsider, this must look like she was sleeping with Severus to get an in with the Death Eaters, and was momentarily struck dumb by how ridiculous the situation was. Even so, she could hardly correct Tonks – this exactly was her cover story, no matter how stinging the humiliation was.

“Yeah… I didn’t realize what I was signing up for, but I can’t very well back out of this now, what’s done is done.” Christina felt her neck and face grow hot…

“Merlin’s pants!” Tonks cried out. “I just meant it must be weird to be back here! I didn’t know you were – disgusting, I’m sure you don’t have to do that!”

If Christina was angry at herself for giving too much away for no reason, her anger at herself was soon eclipsed by her rage at Tonks.

“You should talk, he told me about your Patronus, you know! Couldn’t find someone fully human, then? Is that why you’ve been looking so sullen? Him?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I would believe you’re starting to turn… go on, you can trust me, I won’t tell anybody you’re shagging a Death Eater for a promotion!”

Blinded with rage as she was, Christina remembered she could not, under any circumstances, explain that Tonks had got it completely wrong. It took every ounce of her self-control, and so, she knew she was saying the wrong thing as it exited her lips in a furious shout: “You’re shagging a werewolf for nothing, Tonks! A werewolf, and a spineless coward! Lupin is lucky Severus didn’t poison him with his stupid potion, it would have served him right! Won’t even commit to you, if the state of you is any indication!”

“HE IS NOT A COWARD,” Tonks roared. “He’s noble!”

Christina laughed, a laugh of exhilaration intermingled with malice. Catching her breath and holding a stitch in her side, she cackled: “Noble? Yes, so noble, fucking you but not committing to you, when you’re so clearly the best he could ever ever hope to do, sad as  _ that  _ is!”

A looming shadow grew closer to them, and Christina realized with a gulp that they had let their passion get the best of them. “I’ll report to Moody that you’ve gone full Death Eater, Nettleship! Who knew Snivellus was so good – what’d he do, slip you love potion?” Tonks continued to shriek, not realizing that Snivellus himself was approaching. She suddenly started to heave as her tongue was glued so powerfully to the roof of her mouth, she might have swallowed it.

“Two adults, showing the students how it’s done. Embarrassing. Tonks, when you no longer feel like shouting obscenities in a castle full of children, you may cast Finite,  _ if _ you haven’t forgotten how to do anything without raising a din. As for you, Nettleship…”

Christina had never seen him so angry in his capacity as her teacher. For the first time, she understood why her peers used to think him scary.

“I will deal with you in private. Come.”

He turned back where he had come from, impressive even in his nightshirt, and Christina hurried to catch up with him. When they next made eye-contact, inside his private quarters, her back still to the wooden door, she saw he was not angry at all. “We’re already up,” he said with a smile. He slid easily into her. “I’m so lucky you wanted a promotion,” he said.


	21. Chapter 21

“Satisfying as it was to see this, you oughtn’t have to lose control of yourself like that”, Severus said. “It’s… unbecoming. And imprudent.”

“Sending me a bit of a mixed message, aren’t you?”

Severus smiled. “I can’t unshout what’s been shouted at an Auror in the middle of a school,” he shrugged. “Did we not just go over the importance of playing the part?”

“But what was I supposed to do?” Christina asked with a pout. “You heard the way she talked –“

“I’m past the point of caring what… I believe you called him a spineless coward, yes? Thinks of me. Or anyone naïve enough to fall for his tricks.”

“- I was going to say about me, you self-absorbed wanker!”

He smirked. “Interesting choice of words,” he said to her, both of them still undressed, still flushed.

Christina decided to take that as confirmation that he cared what _she_ thought, and not like the insult it appeared to be. “It so happens that I don’t like being thought of a whore –“

“You didn’t mind it at the Malfoy Manor, if memory serves.”

Christina blushed redder still and held a silk sheet to her chest. “That’s different.”

“I see – because she’s a colleague and they’re Death Eaters – you don’t want her spreading rumors even if those rumours happen to fit in perfectly with your official story?” He paused to appraise her reaction.

“Crouch has been replaced long ago. It’s not your colleagues that you need to worry about, unless there’s something I don’t know about what Aurors are allowed to do. It’s the Death Eaters. Fortunately, your outrage could easily be interpreted as confirmation of Tonks’s suspicion, and I am certain that she will find the time to tell Lupin that, between long-winded speeches about how unfortunate he is.”

Christina smiled despite herself, as she imagined this conversation. “I worry that you still don’t understand,” he continued. “What do you imagine people will say about you when you’ve killed Dumbledore? They won’t be praising your courage and kindness toward your Death Eater… whatever I am.”

His speech slowed down and grew soft – he was exhausted, and so was she, far past caring about anything but sleep. The events of the night had exhausted them both, and it would not be long before they would have to wake up. As she drifted into sleep, Christina wondered if Tonks had managed to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth, and Severus wrapped his arm around her and drew her closer to him. 

***

It had been a long time since Severus wanted anything. He had grown accustomed to a life without desires in the traditional sense of the word. He had lived in service of something greater than himself, and this came at a cost, but it had a liberating effect on him as well: He was not attached, and he could not see how anyone could disappoint or betray him from where he was standing. The traitor was him, he knew it. He had a hand in his friend Lucius’s incarceration, after all. He could not, by definition, be betrayed anymore – it would all be just payment. 

Christina had changed everything. It was supposed to be just sex, but it could never be just sex, because he had known she was unusual ever since he became her housemaster. He knew she possessed all the qualities that made him so devoted to Lily all those years ago, bar the attraction to people she pretended to despise. And she loved him back – in fact, she had loved him before he loved her – even though he had led her on, and had no right to lay any claim to her. Lily had made him choose – had pretended that he had a choice – and she became a Death Eater for him…

Severus had dreams, before everything had gone wrong. He had dreamt of a family, a house, respect, free reign for his experimental magic, to be acknowledged as a superior wizard… to climb so high that he would no longer care about any faded memory of humiliations and abuses past. He had forgotten about his dreams, perhaps for a lack of someone to share them with, but now he felt a dream overpowering him. Him and her, free, the war is over, all secrets are out… and they are sharing a small cottage somewhere, maybe a child, and reveling in happy domesticity and peace. 

His current life was designed for solitude. He had cultivated a persona that would keep people away, because to get close was too dangerous for him and for whatever unfortunate soul might want to get close. Someone who cared what others thought of him would never have assumed the role he had assumed, that he knew – but he cared what she thought, even as he admonished her for caring what Tonks thought. The vision of a happy life of peace and comfort and freedom warmed him inside, and he felt it healing his soul in ways that sex never could. But it was futile, it could never be – he had no chance of making it out of the war alive, and he could only hope that after he was gone, she would know how to protect herself. Only after he was gone, because to lose her would destroy him, more than mortal death could.

“I know James Potter is an arrogant toerag,” Lily had said once, but he had had enough opportunities to review the memory of the last time she had come to his defense – _she had already loved him then. Could she blame me if I took my cue from James and acted exactly as she pretended I should not?_ He mourned the naïve child he had been. Christina, he knew, was much more honest with him and with herself and about what she wanted. She was also what the Dark Lord called “worthier” – he could never insult her by alluding to her parentage.

It was bad enough to know his dream would never come true, but to know that he had condemned Christina to at least one loss, one heartbreak of the worst sort – did she think he had a chance at survival? And all, because he needed a change of scenery and a night off after experiencing further humiliation at the hands of one Remus Lupin… at least, at the very least, he had lived to see Christina defending him, and dangerous and unnecessary as that was, it was so satisfying, and so healing, he could only lose himself further and further in the thought of them sharing a butterbeer by the fire somewhere, far away from all of this, and he would have his own lab, and she could keep a little garden and tend to various plants to her heart’s content… and he could not bring himself to regret that trip to Puddifoot’s, no matter how hard he tried. For an accomplished Occlumens like himself, that was saying something.

Tonks 

Tonks’s encounter with Nettleship left her fuming. Once she regained the presence of mind to undo the spell that made her unable to speak, her first words were “…or are you just hot for Death Eaters, and he’s the only one that would touch you,” but she felt nothing but impotent indignation as she uttered them to no one. After all, flesh and blood Christina and Snape himself had already gone.

She wanted to talk to somebody, and yet she wanted to be alone. Or with Remus… Yes, Remus could understand how she was feeling, could hold her and comfort her, and maybe if he could see that she was on his side, that she truly didn’t care about his stupid condition, he would finally admit that he had feelings for her…

But at the very least, he could always provide amusing stories about the man who’d just hexed her. Like his anecdote how he had encouraged the Longbottom boy to force his boggart into his grandmother’s clothes, and how upset it had made Severus, a full-grown man who couldn’t take a joke.

She wanted to talk to him straight away, but to send a Patronus – _that_ Patronus – would have seemed so desperate… She went instead to the Owlery and wrote the most casual-sounding letter she could, in the hope that Remus would not need too much coaxing to agree to see her. As she set the owl loose she looked up at the night sky and saw that the moon was dark, meaning that the full moon was two weeks away. _No excuses this time, Lupin,_ she told herself ruefully, and prayed for the end of her shift when she could finally open a bottle of cheap mead and forget about everything for a couple of hours.

***

“You’re always welcome to mine as long as you remember what we talked about,” Remus said to her. He was just so sincere sometimes it made Tonks’s heart leap out of her chest.

“Yeah, ‘course. Just friends.”

She walked into his house, surrounded from all sides by nothingness, and she pitied his isolation – his entire life had been designed to avoid hurting anybody during those full moons. The living room looked like he had made a half-assed attempt to tidy up.

He emerged out of the kitchen holding a bottle of mead himself, with two glasses levitating in front of him.

“So, what’s upset you?” He asked, and finally, she could unburden her heart to somebody, and her words came in a torrent, and Remus occasionally furrowed his brow or made small disapproving noises.

“…And then that greasy bastard actually _hexed_ me, probably afraid that I’ll make too much sense to that absolute _slag,_ not that she deserves my advice if she actually thinks she can make progress like that.”

Remus’s finger gently wiped a single tear from her left eye, and she cursed herself for hoping he would lean a little bit closer and just kiss her already. Her glass was nearly empty, but he seemed too focused on listening to her to drink much himself.

“It’s really unfair, that you need to put up with such nonsense on the job,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t know what Dumbledore’s thinking, letting him bring an aspiring Death Eater into the school, it’s really – but no, I mustn’t.”

“Mustn’t what, Remy?” She asked. _Must he always be so bloody cautious?_

“I shouldn’t question him. He gave me a job, when no one else would. It would be a poor way to repay if I –“

“Oh get off it, I won’t tell anyone.”

He handed her another glass.

“Well – I mean, sure she’s supposedly loyal to the Ministry, but he’s supposedly loyal to the Order, and even if we assume neither one is actually on You Know Who’s side, the Order and the Ministry aren’t necessarily… (he trailed of) and then, how can we truly know? Dumbledore won’t hear a word against Snape, but he hasn’t vouched for this Nettleship girl, and… well, Sirius still died, hasn’t he? So, a world of good it did us, having Snape on our side. I mean, you were there, so you know!”

“Yeah!” Tonks said. It never occurred to her that there might be more to this sordid affair than met the eye. She might have threatened to report to Moody about Christina, but she never thought to take her own threat seriously.

“You should have been the Auror,” she said, with a half-smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes. A pained expression flashed across Remus’s face and Tonks knew what he must have thought: “I should have, but Dark creatures are untrustworthy monsters.”

Again, her heart ached for him – while actual former Death Eaters were allowed to be Hogwarts teachers, Remus, who had all the makings of an incredible Auror, was stuck with no options, and he was so resigned to his fate, he thought, that he could not even believe her when she told him that she loved him, that she didn’t care about all of this.

She got up to try to fetch her cloak and leave, to Apparate to her own place, but she stumbled as she did and Remus caught her as she fell. “Thanks,” she mumbled, and felt herself blushing.

“I don’t think you should Apparate and I don’t have any Floo,” he said apologetically. “I… I think you should spend the night. But Tonks –“

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It doesn’t change anything between us,” she said, but she was grateful all the same.

“You’re being very mature about this. That’s a relief. Merlin, I never would have believed you were so young, smart as you are.”

“Mmmm,” she answered, and looked toward the bedroom, and forward to a night in his arms. It meant the world to her that he believed her smart, and in the right, and that he shared his concerns with her. _If only he had realized I was right about us too,_ she complained to herself, and he supported her as they went into the bedroom and crawled between the sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to the real Christina, hope you like it!


End file.
